Training school on entrainment in offshore wind power

TRAIN2WIND is a PhD TRAINing school analysing enTRAINment in offshore WIND farms with computer models and experiments. By its very nature, a wind turbine extracts energy from the wind, which is replenished from the wind field on the sides and above due to the ambient turbulence. However, offshore the turbulence is lower, and wind farms are typically larger than onshore, therefore the wind can only be replenished from above in a process called entrainment. TRAIN2WIND will investigate the entrainment process using advanced high-resolution computer modelling and wind tunnel models together with measurements of the wind field above, in and downstream of large wind farms, using lidars, radars, satellites and Unmanned Aerial Systems. Some of the largest operators of offshore wind farms will provide access to the data and the wind farms in order to investigate whether there is a limit to offshore wind power installation density coming from the refreshment of momentum in very large wind farms or clusters. For them, and for the government agencies currently preparing the Marine Spatial Plan for the European waters, updated knowledge of entrainment and the associated potential limits to wind power extraction offshore is paramount to avoid mis-allocation of tens of billions of euros when planning offshore wind farms too dense or too close. Besides the natural science package, one humanities PhD student will investigate the collaboration between the researchers from a social science and collaboration tools perspective. The project will not only train PhDs, it will also give shorter opportunities to fellows who just want to commit to one year at a time, thus training a total of 20 fellows.