Nacelle-based Lidars (laser-based wind measurement sensors) provide wind farm owners and operators and turbine manufacturers with the opportunity to see the wind at every turbine location across the entire rotor swept diameter for the purpose of tuning that turbine to the wind conditions on site - increasing Annual Energy Production, benchmarking performance, and allowing appropriate turbine upgrades to be applied and the benefits quantified.
Once installed, Continuous Wave Lidars such as ZX TM scan their laser beam around the rotor swept area, at multiple ranges ahead of the turbine and allow analysis of wind speed, direction, yaw misalignment, TI and flow complexity (including wakes) at up to 15 vertical slices across each measurement range including lower tip, hub and top tip height as well as a Rotor averaged measurement.
Use Cases include site calibration, power curve measurements, wind yaw realignment, wake control, turbine maintenance / repair / upgrade assessments, wind farm financial performance reporting and Lidar Assisted Control.
In a recent example, the 105MW Högaliden Wind Farm, Sweden, shall see every Vestas 150-4.2MW wind turbine equipped with a permanently integrated ZX TM wind Lidar. The high resolution wind data ahead of the turbine is being used to allow the project owner to make informed decisions on how they optimise operation of their energy assets.
ZX Lidars provides nacelle- and ground-based Lidars, onshore and offshore, installed and operated by field services company ZX Measurement Services.
