Objective:
LICOREIM works towards creating a reliable, feed-forward lidar-assisted control, that represents a significant shift in wind turbine control strategies which moves from reactive control to proactive control strategies.
In LICOREIM, the project team seeks to demonstrate a robust implementation of lidar-assisted control to address two key issues that degrade performance and reliability of offshore wind turbines:
- Fatigue and extreme loads induced by wind gusts and
- Leading-edge erosion from rain events.
Regarding gusts, the ability to detect large changes in wind speed in advance will allow a wind controller to de-rate the turbine operation and reduce the loads on the turbine. This will reduce the turbine maintenance costs over its lifetime or even to extend the turbine operating life.
Regarding rain, leading-edge erosion is influenced strongly by the interaction of higher operating speeds and larger rain droplets (creating higher impact events) - a problem particularly acute in offshore environments.
Windar Photonics has recently developed the Wind*Eye lidar capable of measuring both wind and precipitation that allows turbines to modify performance (de-rate or curtail) in the presence of significant combined wind and rain. This helps avoid performance degradation caused by leading-edge erosion and reduces blade maintenance requirements. For large-scale offshore wind turbines, being able to mitigate the impacts of gusts and rain are particularly important, since access to these turbines is more difficult and maintenance costs are a much more significant portion of overall project costs.
The project started on January 1 2020 and runs for three years.
Total project budget: 15.89 mio. DKK.