Natural Power, has achieved a world first in demonstrating matched performance of its continuous wave wind lidar, ZephIR, to a calibrated wind tunnel as part of a Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation (DNATF) project with Denmark,s National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy, Risø DTU, global manufacturer of wind turbines blades, LM Wind Power and optical and laser solutions provider, NKT Photonics.
ZephIR 300 was deployed in LM Windpower,s wind tunnel in Denmark and measured wind speeds from 5m/s to 75 m/s with an averaged difference of just 0.4% for a sustained period of time and across all measured speeds. To the company,s knowledge, these are the first reported tests in the world to accurately measure the performance of a lidar in a wind tunnel. These successful test results feed in to the DNATF project ‘Integration of Wind LIDAR,s in Wind Turbines for Improved Productivity and Control,. They also demonstrate the performance of a sister product of ZephIR 300 called ControlZephIR which is based on a ZephIR but with different system software and mechanical housing to allow the unit to be either spinner or nacelle mounted. ControlZephIR provides wind turbine control systems with the necessary data from a number of distances in front of the turbine. It is this data that allows the turbine to steer in to the wind to maximise performance but, more importantly, steer out of the wind safely in high gusts or turbulence aimed at reducing through-life costs of a wind turbine generator due to operations & maintenance downtime.
ZephIR 300 was deployed in LM Windpower,s wind tunnel in Denmark and measured wind speeds from 5m/s to 75 m/s with an averaged difference of just 0.4% for a sustained period of time and across all measured speeds. To the company,s knowledge, these are the first reported tests in the world to accurately measure the performance of a lidar in a wind tunnel. These successful test results feed in to the DNATF project ‘Integration of Wind LIDAR,s in Wind Turbines for Improved Productivity and Control,. They also demonstrate the performance of a sister product of ZephIR 300 called ControlZephIR which is based on a ZephIR but with different system software and mechanical housing to allow the unit to be either spinner or nacelle mounted. ControlZephIR provides wind turbine control systems with the necessary data from a number of distances in front of the turbine. It is this data that allows the turbine to steer in to the wind to maximise performance but, more importantly, steer out of the wind safely in high gusts or turbulence aimed at reducing through-life costs of a wind turbine generator due to operations & maintenance downtime.