Triton is a sonar-based wind sensor for measuring speed and direction at hub height and higher. Equipment users at a recent AWEA Wind Resource and Project Energy Assessment workshop learned about remote sensing research and the latest product developments — and gave feedback to developer Second Wind on the ways they are using the sensors in development and operation of wind farms. Second Wind CEO Larry Letteney discussed Triton deployments, especially in challenging climates and hard-to-reach locations. Despite the use of Tritons in more and more extreme situations, fleet reliability is increasing, up to 97.67% in 2011. He also highlighted the community of experts that has sprung up worldwide to help the wind industry do everything from installing and servicing the equipment to analyzing its wind data.

The sodar-based sensors in short-term measurements, such as validating the shear projections from a long-term wind project or doing greenfield prospecting, has led the developer to expand its rental program and work with partners in the UK and Chile to offer rentals. The rental option lets users deploy the equipment rapidly and use it for short studies without incurring ownership costs.

A few significant improvements to the equipment include Sodar 2.0, a modular platform offering, fine-tuned data filtering tools. It enhances data quality and its usability. The firmware comes with the standard SkyServe support package. It has completed field testing over several months and is available to all equipment users.

The first module filters out environmental background noise, such as crickets. In the past, a consultant would typically ignore data that appeared corrupted by noise. Sodar 2.0 can filter an individual “chirps”. If there are enough “good” chirps in a ten-minute interval, the ten-minute average is retained. This makes a significant increase in the recoof quality data in noisy situations.

Second Wind
secondwind.com

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Filed Under: News, Projects, Sensors

 

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