How much flow information can a turbine-mounted lidar capture?

Abstract

Turbine-integrated lidar systems are capable of scanning the wind fields upstream of the turbine, opening up an opportunity to incorporate these measurements into the turbine itself. However, lidar measurements are always subject to uncertainties which are a result of the operating principle of the lidar. In this paper, we investigate and quantify the uncertainties associated with a turbine mounted "SpinnerLidar" in a high fidelity simulation framework. A sensitivity study is performed in order to investigate the effects of the spatio-temporal resolution, probe volume averaging and directional bias and recommendations are given for different lidar applications, e.g. turbulence research, load verification and control. It is seen that the SpinnerLidar in its current state is sufficient as a control input and for load verification studies especially capturing the rotational wind spectra very well. For estimating turbulence, it is better to operate the lidar at a much faster temporal sampling rate.