Data from operating wind turbines can be used to improve long-term yield assessments on sites investigated nearby. The purpose of this short technical note is to explain why and demonstrate how this can be achieved.
The main reason why operational wind farm data can often help improve long-term yield assessments is simply that nothing compares more to a wind turbine than another wind turbine.
When measurements are used as input to a long-term yield assessment, not only is there some uncertainty associated with the measurements themselves, but also with the conversion by the wind turbine of the available wind resource into energy. What a nearby turbine actually produced on the other hand, is a perfect estimate of what it produces (this is a statement of the obvious). But it is also a close guess of what another wind turbine of the same type would produce. All we are saying here is that a wind turbine does resemble more another wind turbine than a cup anemometer… But that’s not all: for instance, a wind turbine is more likely to have a similar hub height compared to another nearby wind turbine, than it does to the top measurement height of a mast.
The benefit of using operational data is case-specific, as it depends on the location and hub height of the existing turbines with regards to the new site under investigation, their types, as well as on the data fields and duration of the operational period that can be provided to 3E.
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