June 5, 2012, Nr. 34

World’s first control of a wind turbine with a nacelle-based Lidar system

Scientists from the department „Stuttgart Wind Energy” (SWE) at the University of Stuttgart together with engineers from the “National Renewable Energy Laboratory” (NREL) in Boulder, USA performed the world’s first control of a wind turbine with a nacelle-based Lidar system.

The Lidar technology (Light detection and ranging) is a remote sensing technique which allows measuring the wind field in certain distances. The system used is a combination of a commercial system and an in-house developed scanner unit developed by the Stuttgart scientists. The scanner allows steering the laser beam in any direction and thus the laser can measure the whole wind field in front of the turbine at arbitrary points. The system was installed on top of the nacelle of the two-bladed Controls Advanced Research Turbine CART2, located on the test site of the “National Wind Technology Center” (NWTC) in Boulder, Colorado, USA.
This novel predictive control technique enables the turbine to react to the inflowing wind field before it actually reaches the turbine’s rotor and thereby minimizing the loads and increasing the energy production. If both the fatigue and extreme loads can be reduced during the 20-year lifetime the wind turbines can be designed lighter.

Contact:
David Schlipf, Institut für Flugzeugbau/ Stiftungslehrstuhl Windenergie,
Tel. 0049.711/685-68254, e-mail: schlipf@ ifb.uni-stuttgart.de
http://www.uni-stuttgart.de/windenergie/Lidar.html
 

To the top of the page