This article was extracted from the August issue of the Sandia Wind Research Newsletter and published with permission.
The Sandia Wake Imaging System (SWIS) was deployed for a full-scale field demonstration at the Sandia Scaled Wind Farm Technology (SWiFT) Facility in Lubbock, Texas over the first three weeks of July 2015.
The Sandia Wake Imaging System (SWIS) was deployed for a full-scale field demonstration at the Sandia Scaled Wind Farm Technology (SWiFT) Facility in Lubbock, Texas over the first three weeks of July 2015. The successful field-demonstration was a culmination of over three years of technical development, more than a year of safety, environmental and regulatory approvals, and the efforts of 20 individuals from across Sandia and its partners. The team collected hours of inflow data covering a 3.5m2 viewing region along with simultaneous measurements from a nearby sonic anemometer, the SWiFT Sandia meteorological tower, and a Pentalum SpiDAR LiDAR system operated by Texas Tech University researchers. In the coming months, the Sandia team will be analyzing over 50 gigabytes of data collected to learn more about how the SWIS operates in the field and what improvements would be most effective at helping achieve experimental measurement requirements for the next campaign.
The Sandia Wake Imaging System (SWIS) was developed to improve the spatial and temporal resolution capabilities of velocity measurements within wind farms. These high-resolution velocity measurements are needed to provide the necessary data for validating high-fidelity simulations. SWIS uses a technology (explained thoroughly in a previous issue (http://goo.gl/xNfiS3) In which the velocity component measured and quality of the measurement depends on the configuration of the transmitter (laser sheet), receiver (camera), and viewing region.
A software tool that models the physics of SWIS was developed to better predict and anticipate the system’s performance when deployed at the Scaled Wind Farm Technology (SWiFT) facility. This was a result of the complicated measurement dependence on setup configuration and the need to meet the validation requirements at many locations in a wind turbine wake. Data from the recent field test will be used to verify the accuracy of this tool for future test campaign planning.
The experience and data obtained from this recent field test will be used to guide the next phase of the project in the coming year. Through ongoing discussions with high-fidelity modelers and experimentalists with complimentary instrumentation, the SWIS team will refine the system to meet upcoming experimental objectives. This may include upgrades to hardware and software systems as well as data post-processing techniques to prepare for future verification and validation exercises planned under the Atmosphere to Electron (A2e) and other research programs. For more information, please contact the author below.
Sandia National Lab
www.sandia.gov
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