Wood has deployed the first scanning LiDAR (light detection and ranging) devices on two floating wind turbines at the Hywind Scotland Pilot Park located 25 kilometres off the coast of Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
Hywind Scotland, which is owned by Statoil and Masdar, appointed Wood to install scanning LiDARs in order to understand wake and turbulence effects from multiple floating wind turbines, measure turbulent wake spectra and to investigate the effect of wakes on yaw motions.
As part of the scope of work, Wood supplied and installed two Galion LiDARs and motion compensation equipment, designed and manufactured in-house specifically for the project. In addition to this, Wood is also providing long-term operation and maintenance and data monitoring, processing and reporting services.
“This project represents a significant extension of the tried-and-tested IEC compliant transition piece based lidar methodology to a floating platform and is testament to Wood’s capabilities, offering in-house scanning lidar technology and the complex design and build of motion compensation equipment,” Bob MacDonald , CEO of Wood’s Specialist Technical Solutions business, said.
”The first six months’ data acquisition has yielded positive results, offering direct insight into wake behaviour that could not be directly measured by any other means.”
The 30MW Hywind Scotland, the world’s first commercial floating wind farm, comprises five Siemens 6MW floating turbines which were fully commissioned in October 2017.