A research team from Clarkson University is developing an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) called the Clarkson Research Aerial Vehicle for Experimental Needs (RAVEN) to gather wind turbulence data.
Mechanical & Aeronautical Engineering Professor Pier Marzocca and student research team members Daniel Valyou and Jordan Janas display the unmanned aerial vehicle Clarkson RAVEN (Research Aerial Vehicle for Experimental Needs).
The three member team consists of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering professors, Suresh Dhaniyala, Lin Tian and Pier Marzocca along with members from six companies and institutions in the Europe and US. The research has been funded with an amount of $700,000 by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to study wind resources at Lake Erie and to evaluate remote sensing technologies for the estimation of wind resources.
The lead institution for this research will be Indiana University which will be joined by Risoe Danish Technical University, Sgurr Energy, Arizona State University, Case Western Reserve University and Horizon Wind Energy. The principal investigator will be Rebecca J. Barthelmie. The research team will be responsible for developing best practices for integrating and operating instruments, meteorological towers, UAV measurements, lidar technologies and satellite based products. The team will monitor offshore wind and turbulence fields by acquiring low altitude wind turbulence profiles, vertically and horizontally. This three dimensional view will help in understanding the variance in wind turbulence in coastal and offshore areas at different heights and scales. The data acquired from this research project will be used to design wind and turbine farms, to reduce the cost of electricity and optimise energy harnessing. This research program is one of the 41 wind research projects to receive funding from the DOE.