PhD Position / Research Assistant Control of offshore wind farms for provision of system services

About us

ForWind – Center for Wind Energy Research has a vacant PhD position in the research group »Wind Energy Systems« at the Institute of Physics of the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg.

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 WindLab 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. We have direct access to the DLR research wind farm WiValdi (https://windenergy-researchfarm.com). At this internationally outstanding infrastructure for wind energy research, the interaction of atmospheric wind fields with two utility-scale wind turbines can be investigated to an unprecedented extent.

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 at www.forwind.de/en/ and https://uol.de/en/physics/research/we-sys.

Your tasks

To integrate offshore wind farms into the electricity grid, they will have to take over the provision of system services for the offshore transmission grid. To ensure both the quality and quantity of delivered power, new control concepts are needed, that can respond fast to the demands from the transmission grid and to fluctuating inflow conditions specific for new generations of large offshore wind turbines and wind farms. Providing system services opens new degrees of freedom, which can be used to optimise the distribution of mechanical loads in the wind farm, thus also extending the lifetime of the wind farm. 

Your PhD project is integrated into the Living Lab 70 GW Offshore Wind, which researches crucial aspects of the expansion of offshore wind energy, including the design of wind turbines and wind farms, interaction with the offshore environment, regional planning, social and tech-economical questions (https://reallabor.offshore.uol.de/en/). Within your PhD, you will develop wind farm control algorithms that can contribute to providing system services with a focus on active power and frequency control while simultaneously reducing the mechanical loads of individual wind turbines. While your focus will be on control algorithms, structural loads and wake effects, you will have a strong interaction with other stakeholders from industry and academia, including experts on system services, converter control, flow propagation and lidar-based predictions. 

Among others, your tasks will comprise:

• Development of control algorithms for wind farms and wind turbines to enable the provision of systems services and reduction of structural loads.
• Integration of predictions of wind conditions in control algorithms.
• Validation of control algorithms both in large-eddy simulations and in wind tunnel experiments with a controllable scaled wind farm model.
• Cooperating closely with industrial and academic partners as well as international researchers. This includes, among others, a large wind farm operator, a transmission system operator and partners in electrical power engineering.

Your profile

Requirements for employment include:

• a qualifying university degree (diploma, master or similar) in Control, Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering, Physical Sciences, Wind Energy, Renewable Energy or equivalent,
• aptitude and willingness to pursue a PhD with numerical and experimental aspects,
• profound knowledge of control engineering, preferably with experimental experience,
• extensive experience in programming with at least Matlab or Python,
• high motivation and ability to jointly work on applied research topics,
• and very good English skills.

Desired (but not mandatory) qualifications are: 

• experience with wind energy: wind turbine dynamics, wind turbine control, wake interaction, wind farm control,
• experience abroad of several months during the school, study period or employment after graduation,
• good German skills.

We offer

We offer you the opportunity to 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 – while you will also have the opportunity to do flexible and mobile work. Your pathway towards the PhD 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,
• structured supervision of PhD process.

Further, the university cares for a family-friendly working environment and offers a family service centre and children’s daycare on campus. 

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.

Contact

For questions regarding this job opportunity, please contact Dr. Vlaho Petrović at +49(0)441/798-5062 or preferably by email at vlaho.petrovic@uol.de