Floating lidar as an advanced offshore wind speed measurement technique: current technology status and gap analysis in regard to full maturity

Abstract

Floating lidar was introduced in 2009 as an offshore wind measurement technology focusing on the specific needs of the wind industry with regard to wind resource assessment applications. Floating lidar systems (FLS) are meant to replace an offshore met mast, being significantly cheaper and saving an essential part of project upfront investment costs. But at the same time, they need to overcome particular challenges—these are (1) the movement of the sea imparting motion on the buoy and the lidar, and the subsequent challenge of maintaining wind speed and direction accuracy, and (2) the remoteness of the deployed system in an extremely challenging environment necessitating robust, autonomous and reliable operation of measurement, power supply, data logging, and communication systems. The issue of motion influences was investigated in a number of studies and is to be checked and monitored in offshore trials of individual FLS realizations. In trials to date, such influences have been demonstrated to be negligibly or manageably small with the application of motion reduction or compensation strategies. Thereby, it is possible to achieve accurate wind measurement data from FLS. The second kind of challenge is tackled by implementing a sufficiently robust and reliable FLS design. Recommended practices collected by a working group within the International Energy Agency (IEA) Wind Task 32 and within the UK offshore wind accelerator program offer guidance for FLS design and configuration, and furthermore set requirements for trialing the system types and individual devices in representative offshore conditions. WIREs Energy Environ 2017, 6:e250. doi: 10.1002/wene.250 This article is categorized under: Wind Power > Science and Materials Wind Power > Climate and Environment

The future of forecasting for renewable energy

“…New sources of observation data such as LIDAR and floating LIDAR have the potential to provide wind data at multiple heights for less cost than traditional met masts (Gottschall, Gribben, Stein, & Würth, 2017), while data assimilation of radar reflectivities has been shown to improve the representation of clouds and precipitation in NWP (Ivanov, Michaelides, & Ruban, 2018).…”

IEA Wind Task 32: Wind Lidar Identifying and Mitigating Barriers to the Adoption of Wind Lidar

“…The first barrier to their adoption was a lack of experience with such systems and a question of whether or not such devices would survive and deliver the required data. Initial results were promising, which together with the potential cost savings helped drive their adoption [25].…”

“…• Reliability: An FLS is often deployed in remote locations in extremely challenging environments, which necessitates robust, autonomous, and reliable measurement, power supply, data logging, and communication systems [25].…”

An overview of offshore wind energy resources in Europe under present and future climate

“…LiDAR systems have become more popular within the wind industry since the second half of the 2000s, mainly due to the increasing cost of using meteorological masts in deeper waters . LiDAR can be installed on low platforms or ships, and recently the offshore wind industry has made many efforts to develop floating LiDAR systems …”

“…37,38 LiDAR can be installed on low platforms or ships, and recently the offshore wind industry has made many efforts to develop floating LiDAR systems. 39,40 Finally, remote-sensing instruments such as SAR can be installed on the aircraft to obtain highly detailed sea-surface wind observations. 41 Costly but unmanned aerial vehicles have received more attention recently and may be used in the future to monitor marine winds.…”