An approach and discussion of a simulation based measurement uncertainty estimation for a floating lidar system

In recent years, floating lidar systems (FLS) have been used in increasing numbers for project planning and design of offshore wind farm projects. To assess the quality of the measured data or the wind resources, an exact knowledge of the measurement uncertainty of the FLS is important. However, this is difficult because there is usually no reference measurement system at the offshore sites where FLSs are to be used to assess wind resources. In order to estimate the quality of the measurements or the measurement uncertainty for a site without a reference measurement system, in this case only measurement uncertainties from measurement campaigns or trial campaigns that have already been carried out can be used. However, the respective wind and wave conditions differ from location to location. In this respect, a direct transfer of the measurement uncertainty from one measurement location to another location is again subject to a certain uncertainty. In this paper, we explore the possibilities of a different, simulation-based, approach. First, we discuss which parts of the measurement uncertainty of the FLS can be investigated in the context of simulations. Additionally, we present a workflow for the simulation of an FLS for different wind and wave conditions and an approach to determine and compare the simulated bin-averaged deviations for these conditions with real measurement data. Finally, we show a comparison of the simulated uncertainties with measurement uncertainties determined during a six-month measurement campaign of an FLS against an offshore measurement mast and a fixed reference lidar and give an outlook on possible further use cases of this simulation-based methodology.