Environmental Energy
Research Collaboration

The Wind Measurements Project

In wind development, the cost of the wind measurements on site is expensive. With two partners DH is working unique geophysical methods that do not involve towers. Currently, this work is proprietary, more information will be placed here when public.

The Davis Collaborative will be submitting a research project to the California Energy Commission to develop a wind measurement techniques that are designed for the Claifornia topography and wind regimes. The winds in California are quite different than where most of the development is done in norhern Europe. In Northern Europe, most development is in broad large flat fields where the results from one tower can be used to judge the conditions and therefore economics for many turbines.

California unfortunately is completely different. It has a large number of hills and ridges with the wind conditions different on each ridge and also different along a ridge. This tough geography makes wind measurements very expensive per potential turbine. Further, the wind on ridges is not generally level and often gusty and shifty. This leads to torques that are not anticipated in the European stype of mills.

Davis Hydro is working on technologies to economically measure winds that will address these differences.