The overall concept of the WindScanner.eu facility can be summarized as a coordinated and joint European development and dissemination of the already established Danish WindScanner.dk facility for wind energy research in a network between distributed WindScanner research and demonstration nodes embedded within leading European energy research organizations.
The participants are all partners of the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) and the WindScanner vision is to develop a European Research Infrastructure that underpins the EERA Joint Programme on Wind Energy.
The European WindScanner facility uses a newly conceived remote sensing-based wind measurement system to provide detailed wind field maps of the wind and turbulence conditions around either a single wind turbine or across a farm covering several km2.
The WindScanner infrastructure builds upon recent advancements in remote sensing based wind-measuring technology to create measurement techniques, wind lidars, which enable the facility to scan and quantities wind flow and turbulence as wind fields in two and three dimensions from scans across various terrains. As well as being deployed onshore, the infrastructure can be operated offshore from stable and floating platforms or by doing measurement of near-coastal wind farms.
WindScanners generate very detailed and vast amounts of data, which are challenging for researchers and other users to interpret. Therefore, in the forthcoming years, the WindScanner.eu research infrastructure operation needs to be made easier accessible to users and the scanned 3D wind velocity data interpretation less complex. When the research infrastructure has been established it is expected to consist of 6-8 national distributed nodes in Europe in which each node possess and operate its own sets of mobile WindScanner Systems. The mobile distributed research infrastructure will be led from the WindScanner central hub (WCH) located in Denmark at DTU. The WindScanner infrastructure has its primary use within the fields of measurements around large wind turbines, on and off shore. However, it also serves other purposes such as atmospheric boundary layer research, air safety, wind loads on buildings and bridges, wind circulation in streets and the urban environment in general.