White paper
Remote sensing revolution
Profitably developing and operating a wind farm depends on two major factors. One is the ability to find a location with the right wind resource. The other is the ability to manage an asset throughout its operational life to make the most of that wind resource.
Over the last 30 years, this has always involved collecting wind speed data using fixed met towers, constructed during site prospecting, and left up, should the site prove suitable, for the life of the wind farm. If issues are suspected with turbine performance, the reference weather measurement is, yet again, another met tower installed especially for a turbine performance test. Those hubheight met towers can be difficult to move.
But a revolution is coming. In the following pages, we look at the growing experience among developers, investors, technical advisors, operators, manufacturers and consultants of using remote sensing. We outline the changing approaches of an increasing number of developers and operators when it comes to both assessing resource at prospective sites and collecting resource data spanning the entirety of a wind farm, on an ongoing basis.
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