Optical system design and experimental evaluation of a coherent Doppler wind Lidar system for the predictive control of wind turbine

The control of wind turbine blade pitch systems by Lidar assisted wind speed prediction has been proposed to increase the electric power generation and reduce the mechanical fatigue load on wind turbines. However, the sticking point of such Lidar systems is the price. Hence, our objective is to develop a more cost efficient Lidar system to support the pitch control of horizontal axis wind turbines and therefore to reduce the material requirement, lower the operation and maintenance costs and decrease the cost of wind energy in the long term. Compared to the state of the art Lidar systems, a laser with a shorter coherence length and a corresponding fiber delay line is introduced for reducing the costs. In this paper we present the experimental evaluation of different sending and receiving optics designs for such a system from a free space laboratory setup.