The Renewable Energy Research Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst (UMass) has successfully prepared and released an Assessment Report on Natural Power's ZephIR laser anemometer which is based on LiDAR technology.
UMass has undertaken a data validation experiment which finds that the system achieves correlation of 0.98 up to the tested height of 118m in comparison to traditional cup anemometers. In addition, ZephIR was shown to perform strongly in a comprehensive uncertainty analysis with approximately 50% less overall wind speed measurement error to that of the in-situ cup anemometer. Based on a total of six months wind resource assessment, UMass reported that the system is acceptable for use in wind resource assessment applications. It is for this reason that ZephIR® has now been approved to be added to the Renewable Energy Research Laboratory (RERL) suite of wind speed measurement devices.
