Atmospheric stability and wind profile climatology over the North Sea: Case study at Egmond aan Zee

The statistics of atmospheric stability and non-dimensional wind profiles are studied using the standard surface-layer theory at Egmond aan Zee in the North Sea. Measurements at 21, 70 and 116 m are used to validate the theoretical profiles. Charnock’s relation is used to estimate the sea surface roughness. Bulk Richardson number is used to...

Offshore wind turbine design using site data

On the possibility of using site data for offshore wind turbine design

How good are remote sensors at measuring extreme winds?

This article describes some preliminary efforts within the SafeWind project, aimed to identify the possible added value of using wind lidars to detect extreme wind events. Exceptionally good performance is now regularly reported in the measurement of the mean wind speed with some wind lidars in flat terrain. For turbulence measurements, recent...

Influence of wind conditions on wind turbine loads and measurement of turbulence using lidars

Variations in wind conditions influence the loads on wind turbines significantly. In order to determine these loads it is important that the external conditions are well understood. Wind lidars are well developed nowadays to measure wind profiles upwards from the surface. But how turbulence can be measured using lidars has not yet been...

Can wind lidars measure turbulence?

Modeling of the systematic errors in the second-order moments of wind speeds measured by continuouswave (ZephIR) and pulsed (WindCube) lidars is presented. These lidars use the conical scanning technique to measure the velocity field. The model captures the effect of volume illumination and conical scanning. The predictions are compared with the...

Measurement of turbulence spectra using scanning pulsed wind lidars

Turbulent velocity spectra, as measured by a scanning pulsed wind lidar (WindCube), are analyzed. The relationship between ordinary velocity spectra and lidar derived spectra is mathematically very complex, and deployment of the three-dimensional spectral velocity tensor is necessary. The resulting scanning lidar spectra depend on beam angles,...

Influence of different wind profiles due to varying atmospheric stability on the fatigue life of wind turbines