Atmospheric Physics and Turbulence for Wind Energy

The Atmospheric Physics and Turbulence for Wind Energy (AptWind) Doctoral Network provides training for a new creative, entrepreneurial, innovative and resilient industry-oriented academic generation apt to face current and future challenges at the frontier of research within atmospheric flow physics and turbulence for wind energy applications, where the trained Doctoral Candidates (DCs) will be able to convert knowledge and ideas into new products, and services for economic and social benefit.

The needs within this field recently became even more urgent by the launch of RePower EU and the Fit-for-55 package. There, the already ambitious climate goals were revised, and the Commission has committed to increasing its renewable energy target from 32% to 40% by 2030. This measure requires the installation of new wind farms with a power capacity of 30 000 MW every year until 2030, which heavily relies on the realization of taller, and therefore more powerful, wind turbine designs reaching into less well understood atmospheric flow regimes.

AptWind will not only provide a new generation of professionals equipped with a portfolio of transferable skills that facilitates the transfer of high-level academic research into practical and useful tools and methods in the industry but also will contribute to breaking some major barriers for the ambitious green energy transition. The barriers are both in the domain of measurement technologies and modelling approaches as well as in the training domain as further described in this proposal.