Vaisala, a provider of environmental and industrial measurement, has acquired Leosphere SAS, which offers ground-based and nacelle-mounted LiDAR equipment for the wind energy industry.
Vaisala’s products now include its own Triton Wind Profiler – a SoDAR unit – and Leosphere’s Windcube and Wind Iris LiDAR systems.
“The advantages and opportunities remote sensing units bring throughout the life cycle of a modern wind farm are now well-understood. It is common practice for wind energy firms to deploy LiDAR and SoDAR to inform crucial decisions relating to site prospecting, resource assessment and turbine performance testing,” says Jarkko Sairanen, executive vice president for weather and environment at Vaisala. “Adoption of these more versatile measurement technologies to augment conventional met towers is a key factor in enabling the wind industry to increase the scale of project development, not only through larger, more advanced turbines, but also in new, remote markets worldwide.”
Sairanen continues, “The respective qualities of SoDAR and LiDAR are often weighed up against each other, but the fact is that both technologies have their place in a cost-effective, bankable wind measurement campaign. We have often spoken of the remote sensing ‘revolution’ that is under way in the wind sector – and with this complementary product offering, we’re giving the industry the tools it needs to carry this out.”
