Partnership Embarks on LiDAR Assisted Control Initiative for Offshore Wind

ZX and sowento’s scope will cover a range of turbine segments like onshore, offshore, floating turbine systems, all of differing rotor sizes By Abi Wylie / 28 Dec 2023

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Partnership Embarks on LiDAR Assisted Control Initiative for Offshore Wind
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ZX and sowento have embarked on a further, new initiative to demonstrate the benefits of ZX Continuous Wave (CW) Lidars for Lidar Assisted Control (LAC). 

This initiative is building on the success of their collaboration on the ReLACs project (retrofitted lidar assisted control using a simplified wind turbine lidar solution – Wind Energy Science Conference 2023).

The initiative will explore the commercial gains that LAC needs to provide, the ways in which ZX CW solutions can meet those gains and the robustness and sensitivity of the predicted ZX CW LAC cost-benefit. 

The defined project scope will cover a broad range of turbine segments including onshore, offshore and floating turbine systems, all of differing rotor sizes, and for both standalone turbines and wind farm accumulated benefit.

ZX Lidars provides wind lidar products, ZX 300, ZX 300M and ZX TM for wind energy and meteorological applications. These Lidars deliver accurate wind measurements in both onshore and offshore applications at measurement heights / ranges across the full swept area of the blades of modern wind turbines, and beyond.

sowento is an engineering consultancy and technology advisor, with its main business fields in lidar technology and floating wind as well as control applications. sowento is a spin-off from the University of Stuttgart and provides modelling, simulation and control solutions to various stakeholders of the wind energy industry.

“ZX is investing to help our industry advance in areas where real and tangible benefits can be made to reduce the levelized cost of energy of wind farms – be that improving turbine capability and performance, increasing project life, or optimising annual production. We are very pleased to be working with our friends at sowento again to maximise the outcome of this important Lidar Assisted Control initiative,” said Steven White, Director of Turbine mounted lidar at ZX.

Steffen Raach, Managing Director of sowento, added; “Lidar-assisted control is a core expertise of sowento and we are happy to advance the technology in a collaboration with ZX Lidars. 

“We have formed a strong project team working on the different project topics with our lidar experts David Schlipf, a world-wide leading expert on lidar-assisted control, and Wei Fu, a lidar expert who just completed her dissertation at DTU on the characterization of turbulence using nacelle-based lidar systems.”

“This project is another step towards the realization of having nacelle-based lidar systems on every future wind turbine,” added David Schlipf. 

Posted by Abi Wylie Edited by Abigail Wylie, Editor and Copywriter experienced in digital media with a keen interest in ocean science technology. Connect

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