SAFER, SMARTER, GREENER

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ENERGY

HOW CAN REMOTE SENSING

MEASUREMENTS ADD VALUE TO
YOUR WIND FARM PROJECT?
Developers often face difficulties during wind measurement campaigns. Building permit, layout
constraints, poor mounting arrangement, or unexpected outage lead to high uncertainty levels in
the Energy Production Assessment. A remote sensing device can help to overcome these issues.

The challenge What we can do for you

A measurement mast installation can be expensive and requires
a building permit in France. Additionally, many shortcomings
are often observed for wind measurement campaigns like the
use of a met mast which is too short or too far from the future
wind turbines due to land constraints or changes in the layout.
In certain cases, a remote sensing device may add significant
value to a wind resource assessment campaign. However, some
minimal requirements are expected regarding the use of
remote sensing devices.
To classify remote sensing devices, DNV GL has defined three
stages of acceptance. DNV GL has a position statement
regarding most of the ground-based LIDAR and SODAR
devices. Currently, two manufacturers have reached stage 3
for their LiDARs, only for benign conditions* which are often
observed in simple terrains in France. We at DNV GL can
provide the current stage of a remote sensing device on
demand.

* Non-benign conditions arise on forested, complex or extreme shear environments.

Remote sensing device verification
As shown above, remote sensing devices should undergo a verification site-specific or on a test site for their data to be
used within a formal wind speed and energy assessment:

On the Janneby test site in Germany, DNV GL proposes remote sensing device verifications against the
IEC 61400-12-1:2017 and NORSEWInD criteria.

For site-specific verifications, DNV GL offers to assess the terrain complexity according to the IEC 61400-12-1:2017, to check
the compliance of the measurement mast with the IEC, and to perform the verification against the IEC 61400-12-1:2017 and
NORSEWInD criteria.

NORSEWInD

IEC
Added value of remote sensing devices - Case studies
Spatial extrapolation
DNV GL has been approached for a project in simple terrain in the west of France. The mast was located 7 km away from the
proposed wind farm, which consists of three turbines at 100 m. In simple terrain, DNV GL recommends that wind turbines are
located within 2 km from the initiation mast or remote sensing device.

For this reason, a stage 3 LiDAR was first verified against the site mast for a period of 91 days as per the IEC 61400-12-1 criteria.
The LiDAR was then installed less than 1 km from all the wind turbines, which provided a source of on-site measurements. The
campaign lasted 6 months with winter and summer months. A full year of measurements would be ideal to obtain
measurements representative of all the seasons but the 6-month period was deemed sufficient to capture the dominant
seasonality effects.

After having processed and cleaned the mast and LiDAR datasets, and following successful quality checks of the correlations
between the two wind measurement datasets, DNV GL synthesised 2.4 years of data available at the mast to the LiDAR location.
In this project, the main added value of the remote sensing device was to enable a bankable study to be done. Though not
bankable, an energy production assessment initiated from the mast would likely result in a much more elevated uncertainty, as
shown in the table below:

1: the different figures between the two scenarios do not represent the difference in the spatial extrapolation uncertainty only but also the difference in the synthesis and vertical extrapolation
uncertainties, 2: indicative value as accurate estimation of horizontal extrapolation uncertainty is not possible, the met mast being located too far from the future turbines.

The overall uncertainty for this wind farm project is in the average range of uncertainty for similar projects in the French market,
which is a good result considering that no met mast was installed on-site.

Vertical extrapolation
DNV GL has also performed an Energy Production Assessment for a wind farm project of four turbines in the centre of France
on a slightly undulating farmland with limited slopes and small areas of forestry, suitable for a LiDAR measurement campaign.
The site mast was less than half of the wind turbines hub height, resulting in a very high vertical extrapolation uncertainty.

DNV GL generally recommends that wind measurements be conducted at a minimum height of 3/4 of the proposed hub
height. For this project, DNV GL therefore recommended to install a new wind measurement equipment to decrease the
uncertainty of the vertical extrapolation from the mast height to the hub height. DNV GL recommendations were to place the
LiDAR at the exact location of the site mast and to perform a measurement campaign that would catch all seasonality effects,
ideally one year. Therefore, a stage 3 LiDAR was first verified successfully on DNV GLs test site for a period of 26 days as per the
IEC 61400-12-1:2017 and NORSEWInD criteria. Then, the LiDAR was installed onsite.
 After the processing and cleaning phases of the datasets, quality checks will be implemented like comparison between the shear
measured by the met mast and the LiDAR at similar heights and during the same season. Lower uncertainty levels are
expected; the added value of the additional LiDAR campaign can be considerable, as shown in the table below:

1: the reduction in uncertainty that is achieved by using the shear measured by the LiDAR depends on the duration of the measurement campaign, on the data quality, and on the comparison
of the shear measured by the mast and the LiDAR. The best figures correspond to a scenario with a 6-month measurement campaign, featuring a well-configured LiDAR located at the same
position than the mast.

Remote sensing device in standalone

Finally, DNV GL recently worked with La Compagnie du Vent and realised an Energy Production Assessment with standalone
remote sensing data for a wind farm project in the north of France, featuring five wind turbines at 80 m. The site is flat, located on
a plateau, but far enough from steep slopes and obstacles like forestry to consider the flow homogeneous in the cone angle
defined by the beams of the LiDAR. The terrain was therefore considered simple close to the LiDAR location. In these benign
conditions, the LiDAR used is considered as stage 3 according to DNV GL classification.

The LiDAR was deployed on site during 1.1 year, and was then verified on DNV GL test site for a period of 31 days as per the IEC
61400-12-1 and NORSEWInD criteria. An overall 10-year energy uncertainty of 10 % and a 10-year P90/P50 of 87 % were
obtained in the Energy Production Assessment.These uncertainty levels are similar to projects based on mast measurement data
in simple terrain in France. As the LiDAR recorded wind speed and direction data at hub height, this was mostly achieved thanks
to the non-existent vertical extrapolation uncertainty that balanced the higher LiDAR measurement accuracy uncertainty, when
compared to a hypothetical scenario featuring an IEC compliant met mast. To DNV GL knowledge, this project is the first to have
been financed based on standalone remote sensing data in France.

Our services
To help developers to add value to their wind farms projects, DNV GL proposes different services related to remote sensing
devices:
Assistance for site monitoring program
LiDAR/Sodar onsite verification including site complexity analysis and compliance of the met mast with the IEC
LiDAR/Sodar verification on DNV GL test site in Janneby
LiDAR rental
Resource panorama: online data management service for wind measurement campaign
Energy Production Assessment

Contact us

Pierre-Emmanuel Brichet
Project Development Engineer
Advisory France, DNV GL Energy
Tel. : +33 (0) 1 44 50 56 15
E-mail: pierre-emmanuel.brichet@dnvgl.com

DNV GL , 69, Rue du Chevaleret, 75013 Paris, France www.dnvgl.com