Recent Advances in Turbulent Wind Farm Dynamics Colloquium 2026
22-24 April 2026, Imperial College London
To meet the 2050 climate targets, the European Union (EU) is pushing for an extraordinary scale-up of the wind industry, bringing with it extraordinary technological and scientific challenges. This massive and rapid transformation of the sector – aiming to increase offshore capacity nearly 30-fold in under 30 years – has been supported by a collaborative effort from both the scientific and industrial communities to tackle the numerous challenges it presents.
Wind turbines generate turbulent wakes, and because they are often clustered into wind farms for economic, logistical, and technical reasons, most wind turbines are exposed to upstream wakes, reducing their efficiency, accelerating fatigue damage, and ultimately threatening the economic viability of wind farms. As more, and increasingly larger turbines are installed, these issues will exacerbate in the run up to the 2050 targets.
The organisation of this workshop is driven by exciting recent advancements in the understanding of the complex physics governing wind-turbine and wind-farm wakes, with profound implications for the future of the wind energy industry. This three-day colloquium aims to bring together leading experts from the turbulence and wind energy communities, including international scholars, industry professionals, and policymakers, to discuss the latest developments in the aerodynamics of turbulent wind turbine and wind farm wakes, both from fundamental and applied perspectives.
In partnership with: ERCOFTAC, EUROMECH, EPRSC
Conference Chairs
- Chair
- Oliver Buxton, Imperial College London, Department of Aeronautics, United Kingdom
- Co-Chairs
- Michael Hölling, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Germany & ForWind - Center for Wind Energy Research, Germany
- Richard Stevens, Physics of Fluids Group, Max Planck Center Twente for Complex Fluid Dynamics, Netherlands.
Organising Committee
- Martin Bourhis, Imperial College London.
Registration
Registration for the colloquium will be £250 for academics/staff members and £150 for PhD students.