The data will be used as part of a meteorological forecasting system. The trial feeding live wind data for use by specialist meteorological organisations to optimise power forecasting tools, correlate weather patterns and to ensure the safe organisation of maintenance teams working across the wind farm, will run for 6 months.
ZephIR lidar can take 50 data points of wind speed every second, across five user defined heights, being deployed 12 km out to sea on one of the Robin Rigg 132 kV Offshore Substation Structures.
A new communications interface developed by Natural Power for ZephIR has been jointly tested by Natural Power and E.ON enabling live data from the ZephIR to be collected by an E.ON Data Server.
Robin Rigg Offshore Wind Farm is located in the Solway Firth off the coast of North Cumbria, UK, with a total site capacity of 180 MW (60 x 3MW Vestas V90 turbines).