Many windfarms are placed in hilly and mountainous areas, which makes it drawn-out and difficult to make fast and accurate measurements of the wind. The news project RECAST set up by DTU Wind Energy will increase the working time on the measurements with 66-75%.
Today, it takes approximately two to four years to plan and built windfarms. However, DTU Wind Energy wants to make it easier and speed up the process.
The ambition behind the new RECAST project is to make the estimation of the energy production of a new windfarm even more precise. Further, the period where measurements are being made will be shortened from 12 months to around three to four months.
The traditional way of calculating wind resources was originally designed to be used in areas with a simple terrain. However, it is expected that many wind turbines will be placed in more hilly areas in the future. The simple way of doing measurements would be to place more met masts (doing measurements, red.), but it is way too expensive. Thus we need to do something else.
Innovative and useful
DTU Wind Energy will alongside Vestas, EMD International and Renewable Systems Limited look into making cheaper and more efficient ways of doing the measurements.
Rozenn Wagner, who is senior researcher at DTU Wind Energy and project manager, explains the project:
“RECAST deals with three different aspects: It is an upgrade of the WindScanner software, which makes the measurements more user-friendly for the industry. Furthermore, through RECAST we will create a new type of software module so the measurements can be integrated in different calculations and finally the team will create a new tool for making calculations in order to settle whether or not to use MET masts or WindScanner technology,” she says.
Photo: From the report Long-Range WindScanner System