Dr Wolfgang Schlez has been working in the wind industry for over 25 years. He is founder and director of the wind energy consultancy ProPlanEn. He studied physics in Heidelberg and Oldenburg, where he specialised on renewable energy systems, software engineering and wind energy in particular. He worked as a consultant in Germany and then obtained an industrial sponsorship from National Wind Power to research the voltage fluctuations caused by wind farms. He was awarded a PhD by Loughborough University for his work. Dr Wolfgang Schlez spent 16 years with DNV GL (Garrad Hassan), managing the WindFarmer team and carrying out a wide variety of consultancy work across the world. In 2016 he won, with his new company ProPlanEn, broad support from the industry and co-funding from the UK's innovation agency, Innovate UK, for developing the WakeBlaster software - a faster than real-time wind farm flow simulator.