Flow distortion on boom mounted cup anemometers

In this report we investigate on wind direction dependent errors in the measurement of the horizontal wind speed by boom mounted cup anemometers. The boom mounting on the studied lattice tower is performed according to IEC standard design rules, yet, larger deviations than predicted by flow models are observed. The errors on the measurements are likely caused by an underestimation of the flow distortions around the tower. In this paper an experimental method for deriving a correction formula and an in-field calibration is suggested. The method is based on measurements with two cup anemometers mounted with booms at the same height but pointing in 60° different directions. In the examined case of a 1.9 m wide equilateral triangular lattice tower with booms protruding 4.1 m at 80 m height the measurement errors are observed to reach up to ± 2 %. Errors of this magnitude are severely problematic in the measurement of wind turbine power performance, wind resource assessment and for providing purposeful in-field comparisons between different sensors, e.g. lidar anemometers. With the proposed method, direction dependent errors can be extracted and the mast flow distortion effect on the wind measurements corrected to an uncertainty estimated to better than 0.5%. This level of uncertainty is probably acceptable for the above mentioned applications.