Giving wind turbines a “spider sense”
Friday, November 7th, 2008
Okay, the “spider sense” part is a bit of a stretch, but being a Spider Man fan I had to throw it in. Actually, what I’m talking about is a new type of LIDAR (Light Detecting and Ranging) device that’s designed to integrate into the nacelle of a wind turbine. The laser system, developed by a Manassas, Virginia-based company called Catch The Wind Inc., projects three beams up to 1,000 metres in front of a wind turbine. The colour frequency of the beams change when dust particles pass through them, and the colour is directly proportional to the distance of the particle — and thus the wind. Using this approach, based on the Doppler principle, the three beams work together to calculate both the speed of the wind and its direction.
Why is this important? (more…)
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
