Results and conclusions of a floating-lidar offshore test

In this contribution we introduce the Fraunhofer IWES Wind Lidar Buoy, a floating-lidar prototype comprising a proven marine buoy design and a pulsed lidar device integrated in it. A software correction algorithm was developed to remove the effects of sea conditions resulting in system motions from the recorded lidar data. The final performance of the system was verified in a measurement campaign next to the offshore meteorological mast FINO1 in the German North Sea. Both the results of an accuracy assessment and a more detailed sensitivity analysis of the floating-lidar performance with respect to different external parameters were performed. For the recorded horizontal mean wind speeds a very good measurement performance with an R2-value of 0.996 is achieved even when no motion correction is applied. To use the turbulence intensity and wind direction data from the system, the application of a motion correction is necessary. The overall System Availability for the nine-weeks-measurement period was derived as 98%.