Light detection and ranging measurements of wake dynamics. Part II: two‐dimensional scanning

Abstract A nacelle‐mounted lidar system pointing downstream has been used to measure wind turbine wake dynamics. The new measurement and data analysis techniques allow estimation of quasi‐instantaneous wind fields in planes perpendicular to the rotor axis. A newly developed wake tracking procedure delivers the instantaneous transversal wake position which is quantitatively compared with the prediction of the Dynamic Wake Meandering model. The results, shown for two 10‐min time series, suggest that the conjecture of the wake behaving as a passive tracer is a fair approximation; this corroborates and expands the results of one‐dimensional measurements already presented in the first part of this paper. Consequently, it is now possible to separate the deterministic and turbulent parts of the wake wind field, thus enabling capturing the wake in the meandering frame of reference. The results correspond, qualitatively and to some extent quantitatively, to the expectations from CFD simulations which are compared in the paper. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.