Anja Schönnebeck started working at Pondera in March 2023 as a Wind Resource Analyst. To learn more about her, we posed her some questions.

Can you tell us something about your background?

I studied Geophysics in Münster where I learnt a lot about the Earth, measurement methods, math, physics, and fluid dynamics. Due to my growing interest in complex flow systems, such as the atmosphere, I set the focus of my Master on nonlinear physics and numerical methods. Following my studies, I worked as a System analyst and Test specialist, deepening my knowledge in software development and project and product managements.

Afterwards, I spent one year travelling through Latin America and Southeast Asia with my husband, before starting my PhD on Large-Eddy Simulations of wind farms.

What was your PhD about?

During my PhD, I worked on Large-Eddy Simulations (LES) of wind farms. LES are a great tool to study the impact of different wind and weather conditions on wind farm performance. While simpler engineering models rely on several assumptions and parameters, LES provide a detailed representation of the turbulent atmospheric flow in and around wind farms by solving the equations of motion explicitly down to the numerical grid scale. Consequently, LES are especially important in case of varying atmospheric conditions or in complex terrain. In my PhD thesis, I mainly worked on the impact of different mesoscale phenomena, such as dynamic wind direction changes and baroclinity, on the power production of wind farms. Additionally, I studied the interaction of neighboring wind farms and showed that computationally more efficient models do not capture the impact on the power production accordingly.

Why did you join Pondera?

For me it is very important to have varying and challenging tasks in my job, ideally in the field of wind energy and atmospheric physics. While my PhD was mostly focusing on the theory and physics of the flow through wind farms, within Pondera I can apply and extend my knowledge, for example to support the wind resource assessment for future wind farms. Depending on the individual situation of each project, Pondera applies wakes models (e.g., using WindPRO or pywake), CFD models and / or the detailed LES “GRASP” from Whiffle, providing the diverse working field that I was looking for.

Additionally, I should not forget that the working environment and the atmosphere among the colleagues was a big factor in picking Pondera.

What else can you tell us about yourself? Where can we find you in your free time?

Preferably somewhere in nature, either running, hiking, or diving. I also joined the executive board of our local diving club and coach the swim training. My husband and I live in Germany, not far from the border near Enschede and often people ask if there is anything to see in the local lakes. I can only invite them to try it! It is of course very much dependent on the visibility, and you can be very unlucky, maybe not even able to see your dive buddy. But if the visibility is nice, there is a lot to explore. However, I also love to travel, getting to know different people, cultures and landscapes and of course different underwater worlds.