Understanding the Impact of Turbulence on Floating Lidar Measurements

Retrieving accurate turbulence intensity (TI) from motion-corrupted floating lidar measurements is one of the main challenges of the offshore wind energy industry today. Toward overcoming this challenge, this work describes a method to retrieve the motion-corrected TI from floating lidar measurements. The method relies on an atmospheric turbulence model combined with lidar-based flow characteristics estimates. The method simulates floating-lidar and anemometer-like measurements via synthetically generated wind fields in turbulence boxes. We highlight the importance of accurate modeling of turbulence-box parameters to virtually eliminate motion-induced error. The proposed method was successfully tested over a 3-month campaign at IJmuiden by comparing floating-lidar turbulence measurements against those from measurements from a reference meteorological mast.