Why wind fields?
Understanding wind conditions is central to many design activities, from large buildings to wind farms. TNO performs measurements both on- and offshore, with a particular focus on assisting with the design of large offshore wind farms. TNO chooses to work with UbiOps for their machine learning algorithms to reconstruct wind velocity fields from Lidar measurements.
Traditionally, measuring the wind velocity required building a tall mast to reach the height of interest, and then installing a small cup anemometer. However, Light Detection and Ranging (“Lidar”) wind sensing devices are able to measure wind at a distance, and in many places, depending on how the laser beam is pointed. This offers a step-change in information. The only problem is that raw Lidar data does not directly measure the full wind velocity field, so TNO has since 2017 been working on applying machine learning to this challenge.
The picture on the left: Wind field measurement at Maasvlakte II, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Read the report here.