WINDSCANNER.DK - a new Mobile Facility for Wind Energy and Turbulence Research

Windscanner.dk is a new mobile laser-based research facility that can provide researchers with detailed measurements of the turbulent wind that approaches and impacts today's and tomorrow's huge wind turbines. Detailed measurements are needed to improve our understanding of turbulence and its interaction with wind turbines and the surrounding terrain in order to exploit optimally the wind as an energy resource. Using laser techniques, such s measurements can now be performed remotely from ground based instruments. This provides completely new research oportunities.

By measuring around a wind turbine in operation, the facility can provide detailed information of the wind's spatial and temporal structures, never before available. This will be used for the optimization of wind turbine design through major improvements to and validation of computer codes. Ultimately this will improve power production and reduce structural loads making wind turbines better, cheaper and safer.

Wind vectors will be measured in front and in the wakes of the turbines simultaneously, at the rate of several hundred points per second, thereby boosting our understanding of the turbulent atmospheric flow surrounding giant wind turbines. This new key information will assist the design and development of ever-larger wind turbines, and thus contribute to Danish leadership in the rapidly growing world market for wind energy.