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