Mobile Sensing for Wind Field Estimation in Wind Farms

This paper introduces a novel approach for estimating the wind field over an entire wind farm using a mobile sensor to collect limited amounts of data. The proposed method estimates the boundary conditions of a simplified turbine wake model by computing the model sensitivity matrix and using a recursive least-squares algorithm to recover the model parameters from the wind field measurements. To address the fact that it is not practical to take measurements across the entire wind farm, the proposed method classifies each area on the map based on its sensitivity to parameter variations. This classification is then used to generate a suitable path for a mobile sensor, which is charged with collecting data for the recursive least-squares algorithm. The proposed framework can successfully estimate the model boundary conditions using just the measurements collected along the path of the mobile sensor. This preliminary result paves the way for using real-time wind field estimates for the coordinated control of all the turbines within a wind farm.