Calibration Procedures and Uncertainty in Wind Power Anemometers

Abstract

Accurate wind measurements are critical in evaluating wind turbine power performance and site assessment. In a turbine power performance evaluation, wind speed readings are matched with corresponding turbine power measurements to produce a power curve for the turbine. For site assessment, the distribution of measured wind speed is used to determine the predicted annual energy production from the wind. Since wind power is proportional to the cube of the wind speed, a small error in the wind measurement could translate to a much greater error in the predicted wind power, which emphasizes the importance of having accurate wind speed readings. To acquire such precision in wind data, it is recommended that individually calibrated anemometers be employed. With these calibrations, it is also recommended that the uncertainty in the calibration be reported so that it may be used not only in the overall uncertainty for turbine power curves and site assessments, but also in improving the performance of an anemometer. A method of presenting calibration uncertainty is defined in the standard IEC 61400-12-1. However, the standard only refers to the measurement uncertainty of the reference wind speed from the particular test facility. It does not include the uncertainty in the anemometer linear transfer function and the errors directly made by the anemometer signal. This paper will discuss: 1) the details of uncertainty reporting as defined by IEC 61400-12-1, 2) a method of extending the uncertainty to include the errors when using the linear transfer function, and 3) a qualitative description of how to determine the uncertainty in a wind speed measurement in the field.