The computer network, with which the University of Oldenburg is setting new standards in wind energy research and the development of wind turbines, comprises 1000 processors. The mainframe computer, which carries out highly complex flow and environmental calculations, is being funded with three million euros from the Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMU). Prof Dr Babette Simon, President of the University of Oldenburg, said she was delighted with the funding decision. It shows the high value placed on wind energy research in Oldenburg. In addition to ForWind, the centre for wind energy research at the universities of Oldenburg, Hanover and Bremen, the mainframe computer is also available to its research network partner, the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy Systems (IWES), to carry out highly computationally intensive tasks for wind energy.

The mainframe enables precise calculations of the flow around rotor blades and entire wind turbines as well as the flow within wind farms. The ForWind scientists expect these numerically complex calculations to lead to significant progress in turbine development. "The establishment of the computer cluster will help to avoid a much-discussed bottleneck in the wind energy sector in the development of the next generation of turbines and in the efficient use of wind energy," explains Professor Dr Joachim Peinke, spokesperson for ForWind and head of the Oldenburg Fraunhofer project group.