92nd American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Tuesday, 24 January 2012: 1:30 PM
Measurement of Micro-Scale Wind Fields Surrounding a Wind Turbine Using Dual-Doppler Lidar
Room 345 (New Orleans Convention Center )
Rob K. Newsom, PNNL, Richland, WA; and L. Berg and M. L. Fischer

We describe the use of scanning dual-Doppler lidar to provide measurements of micro-scale wind fields in the atmospheric surface layer, with specific emphasis on the problem of resolving flow in the immediate vicinity of a proxy wind turbine. A field campaign at the US Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Southern Great Plains (SGP) site in north-central Oklahoma was conducted during October and November of 2010. Key observational platforms in this study include one heavily instrumented 60-m tower, and two scanning coherent Doppler lidars. For this study, the tower is regarded as a proxy for a wind turbine, and the lidars were used to scan the space around the 60-m tower. A total of 60 hours of dual-Doppler scan data were recorded during the month-long field campaign. Radial (line-of-sight) velocity data from the two lidars are processed to produce estimates of the three-dimensional wind field in a small domain centered on the proxy wind turbine (i.e. 60-m tower). Three-dimensional sonic anemometers at two levels on the 60-m tower are used to validate the dual-Doppler wind retrievals. The field campaign and velocity retrieval algorithm are described, and preliminary results are presented.

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