The Competitive Advantage of Onshore Lidar: Lessons from the Offshore Wind Industry Applications

The ability to measure wind characteristics with infrared light is a concept that has been around for over 50 years. The wind measurement Lidars in the market today have been commercially available for about 16 years, as improvements in fibre optic communications started to deliver cost effective and flexible light management. Given the excessive cost of installing offshore wind masts, Lidars are the most cost effective and abundantly deployed wind measurement tool being used in offshore wind farm development. This paper explores how and why this technology is attracting considerable wind investment worldwide and explores the transfer of the technology to onshore wind farm developments.