Utilisation of inland wind power - Fist results of 200 m mast measurements in comparison to lidar measurements at a complex terrain site

At the end of the first half of 2011 a capacity of almost 27 GW of onshore wind power was installed in Germany. However, wind power onshore has still a huge potential for further growth. To assess this potential, especially in forested and complex terrain, new measurement techniques have to be established. With current tower technologies allowing the installation of turbines with hub heights up to 150 m, extrapolation methods for traditional mast based measurements are becoming increasingly unreliable-particularly under consideration of today's large rotor diameters. Furthermore building measurement masts up to hub height tends to be uneconomic.