Steered LIDAR Resource Performance and Condition Monitoring For Optimising Offshore Wind Infrastructure

This project seeks to take a new LIDAR system from construction of field demonstrator through to installation on wind farm and environmental test for marine ruggedisation. The programmable scanning LIDAR under development will bring a step change in LIDAR measurement capability and enable wind farm operators to really know the wind profile that is hitting their turbine, rather than being kept ignorant by unrepresentative hub height measurements. A number of innovative steps will be employed in order to improve accuracy and capability. This will enable the total farm output to be forecast from seconds to minutes ahead, thus enabling truly flexible grid resource planning. The system will also offer savings by reducing infrastructure failure rates. This will be achieved by augmenting condition monitoring systems with detailed mapping of the incident wind vector field. As an added bonus the system will highlight yaw misalignment. The system will assist wind turbine parameter tuning so that wind turbine may be set up like a race car for the relevant operating conditions.