There's been a little bit of interest in laser based anemometry, or LIDAR, wind turbine control systems. It's been the precept of Risoe's Windscanner program below, and several Risoe-DTU papers at EWEC 2009. It even made this month's Economist technology quarterly. As rotors get bigger, I believe this concept will become more and more import - both for energy production optimisation, and for loads reduction on the blades and drive train.

So what is LIDAR? LIDAR is simply the use of a laser in the same way a RADAR is used, by measuring the time

it takes for pulses to return after they have bounced off minute particulates carried in the air, a profile of the wind speed can be developed. If used in an array, a three-dimensional picture of the column of approaching wind can be more accurately estimated.

How does this help a wind turbine? At the moment, wind turbines estimate the wind speed based on a nacelle-based anemometer - typically ultrasonic, or a traditional cup anemometers. The wind speed measured here is used as the basis for the controller to estimate the wind speed over the entire rotor and set the...(Read whole article)