Our research mission

Decarbonising global energy generation is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity, and transformative advances in any renewable energy technology require a profound understanding of the underlying science. Wind turbines operate in highly turbulent atmospheric flows. Both the local meteorological conditions and the arrangement of turbines in a farm significantly impact power production. However, neither their interactions with one another nor with the surrounding flow field are well understood. We study the fundamental fluid dynamics of wind power generation. Using the unique experimental facilities at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, we combine laboratory experiments and field measurements to optimise wind energy from the blade scale to the farm scale.