Grand Challenges in Wind Energy Research

This is a brief summary of the author’s views on the important future directions of wind energy research. It is impossible for a single researcher to provide a comprehensive review of a multidimensional subject but the recent publication of excellent and extensive multi-authored reviews, in 2019 (Veers et al., 2019) and 2016 (Van Kuik et al., 2016), is taken as justification for a more personal account. The author, moreover, is an engineer and will not cover issues associated with the societal context of wind energy. These range from the many aspects of noise which will be briefly mentioned here, to the intrusion of large wind turbines on isolated rural life (Aeon). One of the most important conferences in wind energy is the “Torque” series. Torque 2020 was to be held at the Technical University of Delft at the end of May but was eventually run electronically in October. It had seven themes which are listed below in decreasing order of the number of abstracts accepted for oral or poster presentation: