Inflow wind field measurements from nacelle-based lidar systems offer great potential for different applications including turbine control, load validation and power performance measurements. On floating wind turbines nacelle-based lidar measurements are affected by the dynamic behavior of the floating foundations. Therefore, the effects on lidar wind speed measurements induced by floater dynamics must be well understood. A new model for quantification of these effects is introduced in our work.

The benefits of lidar-assisted control are evaluated using both the Mann model and Kaimal model-based 4D turbulence, considering the variation of turbulence parameters. Simulations are performed for the above-rated mean wind speed, using the NREL 5.0 MW reference wind turbine and a four-beam lidar system. Using lidar-assisted control reduces the variations in rotor speed, pitch rate, tower base fore–aft bending moment, and electrical power significantly.

Lidar-assisted control of wind turbines requires a wind field generator capable of simulating wind evolution. Out of this need, we extend the Veers method for 3D wind field generation to 4D and propose a two-step Cholesky decomposition approach. Based on this, we develop a 4D wind field generator – evoTurb – coupled with TurbSim and Mann turbulence generator. We further investigate the impacts of the spatial discretization in 4D wind fields on lidar simulations to provide practical suggestions.

This study aims to quantify the effect of inter-farm interactions based on long-term measurement data from the Alpha Ventus (AV) wind farm and the nearby FINO1 platform. AV was initially the only operating farm in the area, but in subsequent years several farms were built around it. This setup allows us to quantify the farm wake effects on the microclimate of AV and also on turbine loads and operational characteristics depending on the distance and size of the neighboring farms.

We perform a validation of the new simulation tool FAST.Farm for the prediction of power output and structural loads in single wake conditions with respect to measurement data from the offshore wind farm alpha ventus. With a new wake-added turbulence functionality added to FAST.Farm, good agreement between simulations and measurements is achieved for the considered quantities. We hereby give insights into load characteristics of an offshore wind turbine subjected to single wake conditions.

Wind evolution is currently of high interest, mainly due to the development of lidar-assisted wind turbine control (LAC). Moreover, 4D stochastic wind field simulations can be made possible by integrating wind evolution into 3D simulations to provide a more realistic simulation environment for LAC. Motivated by these factors, we investigate the potential of Gaussian process regression in the parameterization of a two-parameter wind evolution model using data of two nacelle-mounted lidars.