Wind Energy Data Acquisition Systems

The Research activities in development of test procedures is aiming at improvements of existing testing procedures and development of new procedures to assist the wind energy industry with appropriate testing methods, and to supplement theoretical wind energy research with appropriate tools for verification. To support and verify development of new test procedures a series of data acquisition systems have been developed.

The experimental methods are related to:

• Power performance 
• Loads, dynamics and stability 
• Wind resources 
• Interconnection with the energy system 
• Wind flow field measurements including remote sensing 
• Offshore measurements

The basis for the activities is primarily field measurements throughout the world.

To conduct these measurements a series of data acquisition systems have been developed, installed and put into operation. The data acquisition systems include commercially available technology as well as a series of sensors and signal conditioning units developed at Risø. Several software tools have been developed for data acquisition, data management and data analysis related to research projects.

Data acquisition systems:

• Data logger systems with satellite / GSM communication (~ 1 Hz) 
• PC based load and performance measurement systems (~ 35 Hz) 
• PC based fast structural measurement systems (~ 50 KHz) 
• Lidar systems

Software:

• LabVIEW applications for pc based data acquisition systems 
• Interface applications for satellite and GSM communication 
• Command line applications for data transfer and post processing 
• Improved lidar data acquisition and analysis software

Sensors technologies:

• Cup Anemometers* 
• Wind Vanes 
• Thermometers 
• Pyranometers 
• Barometric Pressure Sensors 
• Relative Humidity Sensors 
• Position Sensors 
• Microphones 
• Strain Gauges 
• Pitot tubes

* Development and manufacturing of the former Risø Cup Anemometer has been moved to spin-off company WindSensor