Wind Energy Meteorology: Insight into Wind Properties in the Turbine-Rotor Layer of the Atmosphere from High-Resolution Doppler Lidar

Abstract

Addressing the need for high-quality wind information aloft in the layer occupied by turbine rotors (~30–150 m above ground level) is one of many significant challenges facing the wind energy industry. Without wind measurements at heights within the rotor sweep of the turbines, characteristics of the flow in this layer are unknown for wind energy and modeling purposes. Since flow in this layer is often decoupled from the surface, near-surface measurements are prone to errant extrapolation to these heights, and the behavior of the near-surface winds may not reflect that of the upper-level flow.