Improving a wind farm’s performance begins with assessing the current operation, as it is important to understand what is occurring in the park, and what any potential problems are before developing a strategy to improve performance.  Every park is different, so simply implementing a post-construction product that improved a similar park may not produce the desired results.

There are many ways to assess a park’s performance.  These vary in uncertainty and cost, where the methods with the lowest uncertainty are generally very costly.  Our preferred approach is to start with an assessment based on the available park data (SCADA and any wind measurements).  One can generally derive a good understanding of the park’s performance using this data, including identifying problem turbines.  An ideal situation includes a wind farm with a well-positioned reference mast that can be used to evaluate the accuracy of the nacelle-based anemometers.

As every park is different, the quality of the available data varies and additional measurement may be required in order to complete the investigation.  Some examples of additional measurement needs include:

• Ground based lidar upwind from certain turbines in order to evaluate/adjust the wind speed on the nacelle-based anemometers (Nacelle Transfer Function (NTF))
• Ground based scanning lidar to scan upstream from a row of turbines to identify if any turbulent or problematic conditions are impacting individual turbines