Australian Wind Monitoring Services

The basis of proving the productivity of any wind turbine installation is a measurement of the actual wind speed at the site of the turbine. While it is possible to erect wind turbines without first monitoring the wind resource, we recommend that it is best practice to begin first with a wind monitoring programme.

If you know your desired application, please select your requirements below:

Wind Monitoring for Wind Farm developments

Wind Monitoring for medium and small scale Wind Turbine projects

For an overview of wind measurment for wind energy projects, please read on:

Wind monitoring requires the use of wind monitoring instruments to measure wind speed and wind direction, connected to a data logger. The instruments must be mounted on a tall mast structure and must remain held in the wind stream for a length of time longer than the major cycles in wind climate.  Wind climate cycles include seasonal fluctuations; hence the preferred length of time to monitor is one full year. Climate cycles with a period longer than one year are dealt with by correlating the monitored data from your site to a reference station which has been recording for many years, a process we can also assist with.

Wind speed increases with height above ground level, as does the available energy. The monitoring mast structure should ideally be tall enough to hold the instruments in the valuable stream of wind speeds at the same height as the hub of your turbine. In reality, you may not yet know the exact size of the wind turbine(s) you intend to install, and you may also be unable to spend large amounts for hub height monitoring at the early stage of a wind project.

Wind monitoring masts are therefore often shorter than the expected wind turbine hub height to provide an economic solution which nonetheless enables more accurate estimation than without any mast. As part of this compromise, wind instruments are mounted at several heights up the mast structure in order to measure the variation in wind speeds with height, also called the ‘wind shear profile’. This vertical shear profile of the wind can then be extrapolated to greater heights to estimate the average wind speed at the turbine hub height, without actually monitoring at the turbine hub height. Error bars are increased as a result of this but can be quantified. Enhar can undertake this type of wind shear profile analysis.

For early stage wind farm prospecting or to check the variation in wind speeds around a larger site, smaller masts can be used with monitoring at a single height. Enhar can supply and install a quickly-erected 15m wind monitoring system ideally suited to these applications.

 We trialled this telescopic wind mast in Melbourne.

Power Performance Testing

As well as feasibility and energy yield estimation, wind monitoring is also an essential component of wind turbine power performance testing. Here, winds are monitored at the site of the turbine prior to erection of the turbine, plus at a nearby reference site. The reference wind monitoring structure remains in place while the turbine is built and commissioned at the adjacent location. The winds at the reference site are then used to provide a highly accurate estimate of the undisturbed winds experienced by the operating wind turbine. The power generated by the wind turbine is compared to the manufacturers claimed performance at that wind speed. Variations from the warranted power curve can therefore be identified, whether they be higher than expected, compliant or lower than expected.

Enhar can assist with your wind turbine power performance and testing programmes, please contact us to begin the process.

We design and inspect wind monitoring systems to International Standard IEC 61400 Part 12 ‘Power Performance Measurements of Electricity Producing Wind Turbines’. This provides assurance that the results are both accurate and robust.