Windar Photonics LiDAR Optimizes Wind Farms

Antoine Larvol, CTO of Windar Photonics, discusses how their
continuous wave LiDAR technology enhances wind turbine performance
through optimization and monitoring, increasing AEP and reducing
loads, particularly for legacy turbines. Sign up now for Uptime
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show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on
wind. Energy's brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering
Tomorrow. Alright, we're here in Phoenix, a CP, clean power, uh,
2025. So I'm, uh. Sitting with Antoine Larvol from, he's a CTO from
Windar. Yep. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Uh, we've been, uh,
happy enough to get actually to sit inside your booth where it's
nice and qui. Quiet and isn't it nice? Yeah. We got glass behind
the camera here and people are walking by, walking by, walking by.
Um, so this morning, uh, we, we talked yesterday a little bit about
what wind photonics does. Yep. Of course, from our, uh, some of our
other friends around the world. We've heard about some, some
campaigns you've done in the United States, which have been. Really
successful. So yeah, congrat good. Congratulations there. Yeah,
thank you. Um, and, and as, as a lot of things in the wind
industry, Windar, photonics based in Denmark.  Antoine
Larvol: Yeah.  Joel Saxum: So you guys, uh, bring
it, bring in that Danish [00:01:00]technology. We're here, of
course, bringing it to the US market at a CP, the American Clean
Power Show. So welcome to the States. Thank you. Um, it's a short
one, but a  Antoine Larvol: good one. Yeah, yeah,
yeah,  Joel Saxum: exactly. So, so I want to talk a
little bit about what Windar photonics and, and it is a LIDAR based
sensor, correct?  Antoine Larvol: Yes. Right. So. We do
continuous wave base, uh, lidar. Yep. Uh, main product is a two
beam version mm-hmm. Where you shoot, uh, at 80 meters in front of
the turbine. Mm-hmm. And you basically alternate from one beam to
the other. And measure wind speed and direction upfront, the, the
turbine among others.  Joel Saxum: Right. So we're
talking about, uh, if you, if you're in the wind industry, you've
ever seen these lidar units that are put actually, you're the cell
mounted, correct? Yes. Okay. Yeah. So, and, and, uh, we're looking
more on the optimization, retrofit monitoring side of things.
Yeah,  Antoine Larvol: exactly. So we've never been a
resource assessment company. Yeah. Or we don't look at power curve
verification and stuff like that. We
really [00:02:00] focus on. Retrofitting those, existing
turbines. And then add value to In terms of information to, the
customer, Yeah. With the mon monitoring side of things. Yeah. And,
from day one, that's been the goal of Windar Making something
cheap, robust. That can just stay there and measure with good
availability, wind speed, and direction coming to your
turbine.  Joel Saxum: I love it. so we wanna squeeze as
much as we can outta these turbines. And you guys are increasing
AEP that's, the name of the game. Yeah. Right.  Increasing AEP
below rated. and then above rated you decrease loads. Increase
uptime. and we basically do that by going on the line of the wind
direction. that you then feed to the turbine controller and then we
can actually adjust the, yaw position of the turbine according to
our information. So I want to talk a little bit, we, we chatted a
little bit offline about the, technology behind it, right? Yep. And
people in the wind industry, if you're around the wind industry
around resourcing or you're around optimization, you've
heard [00:03:00] lidar. Yep. You know what I mean? And,
but I don't think. A lot of people know exactly what lidar, what it
does, how it does it. Yeah. What is the technical, where's the
magic coming from? Exactly. It's just a black box. It's just a,
technically, I guess it's just a white box. Yeah. For the wind
photonics. But how do, how does the lidar work to measure actual
wind speed coming into the turbine? Antoine
Larvol: Yeah,  Joel Saxum: so  Antoine
Larvol: we basically focus laser light, and we do a focus
point at 80 meters in front of the turbine. And basically there
where your light concentrates on a specific location, then you hit
particles in the air, pollen, water droplets, dust, whatever. Dust.
Yeah. Okay. Whatever is there. And then you will, have a certain
frequency of the light you emit, and that will just bounce on those
particles and come back with a slight shift in frequency. And
that's doppler shift. And then. Analyzing this shift, then you can
derive a wind speed along the beam Of,
the, [00:04:00] lidar.  Joel Saxum: So 
Antoine Larvol: we're  Joel Saxum: talking about
like a bunch of really, really smart trigonometry kind of 
Antoine Larvol: Yeah, exactly. I mean, you have a bit of
optics. Yeah. Trigonometry. Uh, and, uh, yeah, it's a bunch of
optics. Hardware, uh, software. A lot of software. A lot of
software, yeah. Uh, to analyze that and squeeze as much info out of
this. Right. We do, uh, you can derive wind speed, wind direction.
You can look at turbulence. Mm-hmm. You can, uh, detect our wake,
uh, is going on. So you can actually detect whether or not your
turbine is in the wake. Uh, and then based on that, then you will
do different ing strategy in order to make the most of your
turbine. Right. Decrease loads or increase, uh, outputs.  Joel
Saxum: Yeah. So and mean. That's what, uh, the uptime podcast
we're here about. When we bring technology, we talk to. Smart
people like yourself, Antoine. Thank you. We, we want to pick the,
pick out the solutions, right? Like what, how are you guys helping
the wind industry? And that's the important thing here. So
we've [00:05:00] talked about two, basically, kind of two
tracks that you guys go down and one of 'em is optimization. Yep.
And one of 'em is monitoring.  Antoine Larvol: Yep. 
Joel Saxum: So let's, let's start with optimization. What does
that look like from wind?  Antoine Larvol: Yeah, I mean
that's a bit the unique part of wind. Uh, so we do lidar, uh, but
actually the. Like this good selling product is this, uh, wind
technology. So basically what it does is that we go on the line of
the wind direction, uh, of the sensors from the primary secondary
sensor from the turbine, and then we go on that line, read this
info that they are measuring, and then, uh, correct this info
according to our measurements. Ah, okay. What's going on out there
is that, you know, those, uh, devices are placed behind the rotr.
So they're basically, uh, biased by the blades, basically turning
in front and creating a lot of turbulence. You also, you have some
effects depending on the, your misalignment of the turbine. And so
basically you don't have a great [00:06:00] measurement
from, from those devices. So what we bring is that, right. We
measure upfront, so we are unbiased and then modify, the
information, the wind direction information, and then feed that to
the turbine controller so we can actually, yo. The turbine the way
we want.  Joel Saxum: So in a really simple way, you guys
are creating what is an amazing wind speed and direction sensor.
Antoine Larvol: Yeah. So for this WindTIMIZER we only use wind
direction information. And then basically improve what the turbine
is given as information about. Relative wind direction of the
nacelle Right. So yaw error. and then we correct that. So we
increase, energy production below rated wind speed. And then we
have different strategies above rated wind speeds, aiming at
reducing loads and increasing uptime. So the way we do that is
actually we introduce small yaw misalignment, depending on
wind [00:07:00] speed, in order to achieve that.
Especially decreased loads on, blades. Yeah. and the drive train
rate.  Joel Saxum: So in, let's, talk a case study,
right? We wanna, we always want to give examples, right? Yeah. So,
so in the states we had, we talked about you guys are focusing on
more, well not globally really, but you're focusing on more of like
the last generation of turbines, not the brand new ones. Antoine
Larvol: Yeah. So we are like really focusing at the moment on
all this generation of. G 1, 15, 16. Two three. Yeah. 87 97 V 80, V
82. V 90, uh, seven, uh, maybe 2 92. Okay. Like this kind of
turbines. Yeah. Uh, that's been not there for, for a while. And
basically where you don't have a lot of offering on how to squeeze
more power. And they're not supported anymore by manufacturers,
right? Yeah. Uh, so that's where we come in and offer that to. To
be able [00:08:00] to, to produce more power, decrease
load. Right. So the way we do that, usually when, uh, a new
customer approach us is that you will do a deployment of like five
units in a, in the farm. Mm-hmm. Uh, basically pick randomly, uh,
if, uh, five turbines and then we will install, uh, technology. You
install like in three, four hours you're done with installing the
system. Oh, nice. On the tripod. Uh, wire that to the turbine
controller. And then, uh, you will start this toggling campaign. So
what we do is that we turn on the technology for 70 minutes and
then turn it off 70 minutes. This way you have a slight shift over
of the period over the day. Mm-hmm. So you don't always hit exactly
the same time. So in case there's, you know, any effect, recurring
effect, and you go away from that, and then you will do this
toggling on and off for like a period of like three, four months,
depending on wind conditions. And once you have like enough data on
every wind, wind. You will analyze, uh,