E!12842 Windfarm integrated radar sensors for digital operations and management

Wind farm control approaches try to reduce the strength of upwind wakes so the downwind turbines can produce, with a net gain in production across the whole wind farm. Another approach steers upwind turbines slightly away from the oncoming wind, so they still turn and produce but their wakes are steered away from downwind turbines. All approaches are dependent on cutting-edge computational fluid dynamics models and are being verified using the latest meteorology instruments and production data. However, for meteorological measurement techniques to be practical for wake management in real-time digital wind farm control applications they need to deliver wake data quickly and accurately enough, in real-time and in all weathers. These criteria cannot be met by current instrumentation and data applications. The WISDOM project, led by Windmaster Technologies, in partnership with Vattenfall, DTU and Anemo Analytics, supported by the EU?s Eurostars programme, will verify and launch a new approach to the problem. It will integrate an always-on real-time wake radar system, which uses multiple antennas working together inside a wind farm, with dynamically-calibrated computational flow models and wind farm control algorithms.

The WISDOM project have had the following outcomes: 1) A new multi antenna radar system, suitable for use within a wind farm, streaming ready-to-use real-time radar based wind velocity data, has been developed and tested 2) New, real-time-data wind flow- and wake models have been developed. 3) A wind farm control application giving real-time wind data from the radar sensors and other monitoring systems, integrating new real-time wind flow- and wake models has been been developed and tested

These are the project delivery phases, each of approximately 6 months duration, sequential along the timeline: 1) Prepare onshore techical tests 2) Onshore techical validation 3) Prepare onshore functional and perfomance test 4) Onshpre functional performance and demonstration test (with Technical University of Denmark, superviced by pilot customer, VATT) 5) Close-out and commercial launch Spanning the five phases are one project management, one commercial and five technical Work Packages (WPs). The key to multi-disciplinary inter-development will happen at the project start, in WP1, where participants shall set the common business requirements, technical specifications, interdependencies between components and communications protocols, establishing the basis for technical coordination and risk management. WP2 shall adapt flow models to use real-time data from the new remote sensors, with the goals being to improve prediction accuracy and to integrate flow models with the business applications. From a portfolio of existing and prototype business applications WP3 will develop a real-time capability for these three: Real-time active wind farm control, Decision-support for main components lifetime estimation and Decision-support for turbine optimisation. WP4 will develop the commercially viable remote sensing hardware, sensor remote control and data streaming product from field-trial prototypes, while delivering data streams for use by WP2 and WP3. WP4 will use readily available components and subsystems wherever possible in order to avoid delays. DTU shall drive WP5, which will evaluate the accuracy, reliability and value-add of the outputs from WP2, WP3 and WP4. Commercial launch will happen at project end as a result of WP6, where functional perfomance testing with research partner, DTU, and pilot customer, VATT, shall provide feedback, product-development suggestions and business model input.