The current research activities in the field of wind energy focus on meteorological aspects of wind energy. The aim is to describe the spatio-temporal characteristics of wind fields on different size scales using the method of numerical flow simulation. Besides the modelling of wind resources for sites on land and at sea, the group's work focuses on the investigation of the interaction of atmospheric currents and wind farms.

In the working group both LES and RANS models are used. The main focus of the application of RANS simulations is to improve methods for the estimation of wind resources with a spatial resolution of a few meters. Corresponding methods are especially needed for wind resource estimation in complex terrain.

The LES model PALM is used in the working group for the investigation of the flow in front of, in and behind wind farms. For the consideration of wind turbines in the simulations, simple approaches, such as an actuator disk model, but also couplings with aeroelastic models, such as FAST, are used depending on the objective. The main focus of the work is the investigation of the influence of atmospheric parameters on wind conditions in wind farms. The knowledge gained from the investigations is needed for the development of wind farm controllers, for example.

The Energy Meteorology Group uses the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) to obtain information on wind resources with a spatial resolution of a few kilometres. Within the NEWA project, a New European Wind Atlas has been derived together with European project partners, which provides detailed information about wind resource describing quantities with a spatial resolution of 3 km and a temporal resolution of 1 h for a historical period of 30 years. A further field of application of the model WRF in the working group is the calculation of the wake of large offshore wind farms.

Numerical flow models are potentially powerful tools. However, to prove the validity of the information obtained with them, a validation of these models with measurement data is necessary. A part of the working group Energy Meteorology is therefore focused on the acquisition of data for the validation of the flow models used in the working group. These activities mainly take place within the DFWind research project, in which the members of the Research Association for Wind Energy are working on a test field for wind energy research in Northern Germany.