The Fraunhofer IWES Wind Lidar Buoy is a compact floating Lidar with a fully encapsulated, well-protected and integrated ZephIR 300 wind lidar device combined with a reliable power supply strategy and an efficient in-house developed motion correction algorithm.
Data from the buoy will be used for floating offshore energy assessments, according to the criteria within the Carbon Trust Offshore Wind Accelerator roadmap for the commercial acceptance of floating lidar technology. The buoy is equipped with a ZephIR 300 Lidar which is situated next to the FINO1 mast. It was subjected to an offshore verification test in situ in the German North Sea about 45 kilometres north of the East Frisian island of Borkum.
Both the availability and the accuracy of the floating lidar system were assessed against the offshore test site which was set up as a lidar-mast comparison adhering to IEC 61400-12-1 ed.2 CD where wind measurements from the lidar and the mast are compared with each other for different corresponding height levels and reference conditions.
The results of the trial demonstrate the ability of the system to deliver excellent correlations and extremely high data availability when compared to a traditional tall met mast structure.
“Offshore, ZephIR 300’s unique 50Hz measurements effectively freeze any motion encountered in platforms such as the Fraunhofer IWES Wind Lidar Buoy” said Ian Locker, MD of ZephIR Lidar. “Over 80 percent of the industry’s floating lidar providers have now chosen ZephIR for their platform and we are very pleased to see results now within the Carbon Trust’s Offshore Wind Accelerator Roadmap.”
The successful verification provides further confirmation to the industry that floating lidar has a very real opportunity to replace meteorological met masts for the measurement of wind resource for a fraction of the current cost.
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