Postdoc position / Research Assistant Multiscale Atmospheric Simulations for Wind Energy Purposes

About us:

ForWind – Center for Wind Energy Research has a vacancy in the team »Energy Meteorology« of the research group »Wind Energy Systems« at the Institute of Physics of the University of Oldenburg.

Your tasks:

To increase the efficiency and reliability of wind energy production, it is crucial to simulate atmospheric processes across various scales. As wind energy expands, particularly offshore, understanding larger-scale atmospheric interactions becomes critical, e.g. for mitigating negative wake impacts on a regional scale. At the same time, knowledge of the local turbulent flow is still important to accurately resolve smaller-scale atmospheric interactions of individual wind turbines.

Your work will contribute to the further development of atmospheric modelling tools that can cover all scales from the meso- to the microscale. You will, e.g. work on the improvement of mesoscale models for the simulation of the near-coastal marine atmospheric boundary layer with its challenging heterogeneous surface conditions that are also strongly varying with time.

Among others, your tasks will comprise:

• Implementation of land surface changes with tides in the Wadden Sea in the mesoscale model WRF for improved mesoscale simulations of the wind conditions in the German Bight
• Further development of wind farm parameterizations for mesoscale models that allow for a consideration of wind farm control
• Implementation of the impact of large PV wind farms on the exchange conditions at the surface in the mesoscale model WRF to allow an assessment of the impact of offshore PV on offshore wind resources
• Improvement of the offline nesting of the large-eddy simulation model PALM in mesoscale models for offshore simulations
• Development of best practice guidelines for multiscale simulations of wind turbines in complex terrain with a combination of the mesoscale model WRF and the LES model PALM
• Investigation of innovative simulation approaches for atmospheric simulations with resolution in the gray zone of atmospheric turbulence.

Your profile:

Requirements for employment include:

• PhD degree in Physical or Geophysical Sciences or Meteorology,
• qualifying university degree (diploma or master) in Physical Sciences, Geophysical Sciences Meteorology or in a similar field,
• profound knowledge in boundary-layer meteorology
• profound knowledge in mesoscale modelling (preferably in WRF),
• profound knowledge in the analysis of turbulence resolving measurement data
• experience in analysing large data sets,
• experience in publishing results of your research work in international scientific journals and conferences
• fluency in communicating and reporting in English.

We offer:

We offer you the opportunity to further develop your scientific career in a young and lively academic environment. You will be working in the WindLab – one of the university's most modern office and lab spaces – and have the opportunity to do flexible and mobile work. Your pathway as a researcher is actively supported by, e.g.,

• multidisciplinary cooperation with other researchers at ForWind and Fraunhofer IWES in Oldenburg,
• direct collaboration with industry while maintaining the links with our national and international partners in academia,
• optional secondment at an international research institute
• development of personal, scientific, and teaching skills through an individual training programme and selected teaching tasks,
• opportunities to present scientific results at international conferences and through peer-reviewed publications to extend your specific network,
• active participation in the planning and implementation of teaching and supervision of PhD students
• contributing to the conceptualisation, application and organisation of third-party funded projects.

The payment is based on the collective agreement for the public service in the German federal states, TV-L E13, for a 100% position and initially limited to three years.

For your work, you will have access to our high-performance computing systems installed in 2023 and a regional HPC cluster that allows for performing cutting-edge simulations. You will work in a team with over two decades of experience in numerical fluid dynamics and simulations of atmospheric flows using the mesoscale model WRF and the LES model PALM. You can access measurement data from a worldwide unique research wind farm for validation purposes.

Our standards:

The University of Oldenburg is dedicated to increase the percentage of female employees in the field of science. Therefore, female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply. In accordance to § 21 Section 3 NHG, female candidates with equal qualifications will be preferentially considered. Applicants with disabilities will be given preference in case of equal qualification.

Further information:

Wind energy research at the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg has gained international recognition by its integration into ForWind – Center for Wind Energy Research of the Universities of Oldenburg, Hannover and Bremen and the national Wind Energy Research Alliance of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems (IWES) and ForWind.

At ForWind, we maintain and value collaboration between our research groups and partner institutions such as the European Academy of Wind Energy members. In Oldenburg, our 50 researchers from physics, meteorology and engineering are collaborating at the »Research Laboratory for Turbulence and Wind Energy Systems« centred on wind physics. Our mission is to develop an improved understanding of atmospheric and wind power plant flow physics required to serve the global demand for clean and affordable electricity. Therefore, we conduct laboratory experiments, free-field measurements and HPC-based numerical simulations. The main topics include the description and modelling of wind turbulence, the analysis of interactions of turbulent atmospheric wind flow and wind energy systems, as well as control of wind turbines and wind farms. The covered scales range from small-scale turbulence up to meteorological phenomena. Our research facilities comprise three turbulent wind tunnels, various equipment for free-field measurements at on- and offshore wind farms and a high-performance computing cluster. Almost all our projects combine analyses at more than one of these infrastructures.

Further information is available atwww.forwind.de/en/ andhttps://uol.de/en/physics/research/we-sys.