Dong Energy and SmartWind Technologies have installed an advanced radar system, designated BEACon, at the Westermost Rough offshore wind farm off England’s east coast. It is now collecting three-dimensional data on the wind flow in the area. The project, the first of its kind in the world, is said to represent a major shift in wind measurements.
“This is a huge step forward for wind insights,” commented Nicolai Gayle Nygaard, BEACon technical manager at Dong. “We’re getting minute-by-minute 3D images of the wind flow through the power plant. This is a game changer for the industry. We’re no longer limited to measuring the wind at just one point, now we can document the wind field across the entire wind power plant and coastal domain. Conventional measurement technologies … [produce] … a limited view. With the new radar we get new insights that provide valuable information for the design and operation of future wind power plants”.
Texas-based SmartWind Technologies has developed and deployed the BEACon radar system. John Schroeder, co-founder of SmartWind commented: “SmartWind has provided an advanced hardware and software solution to measure the complex flows at the Westermost Rough wind power plant and to reduce the generated complex data fields into a user-friendly format. The acquired data will facilitate long-term studies and aid real- time decision-making. Application of this new capability will undoubtedly drive down the cost of wind energy.”
Although the measurement campaign has just begun, the initial data is providing a lot of detail about how the Westermost Rough wind turbine array interacts with the evolving wind field. Every week, the radars collect so much data that the information volume exceeds Wikipedia in size.
BEACon means ‘beamed radar for energy assessment and site conditions’. It is an R&D and technology validation project led by Dong Energy Wind Power. The emitter produces radio waves in a narrow beam, which is scanned across the wind power plant. As the radio waves are scattered by particles carried by the wind, their frequencies are slightly shifted. This Doppler shift allows determination of the wind speed and the wind direction. One single radar cannot distinguish between the wind speed and the wind direction. Two radar sets separated by several kilometres are needed to get the full picture. Depending on the atmospheric conditions, the system can measure the wind up to 35 km from the coast.
The measurements will continue for 18 months, after which the radar sets will be moved to another location. But the dual Doppler radar system has already documented how the wind turbines in the power plant shadow each other and how these wakes develop behind the wind array.
This is providing new insights into the complexities of the wind flow through and around an offshore wind power plant. By knowing how the wind varies through the array of turbines, operators can better predict the power output of the turbines.
