BLOG! (AKA diary!)
Welcome back to our blog describing our research progress. So in brief we did the majority of the installation in January and have been operating since then. So here we are back in Portugal (again!) but not for installation, but rather for maintenance and continuation of our long-term measurements.
Friday 12th May
Here we are in Portugal (and so is the Pope!). This time we flew to Madrid and drove from there. As before we are staying at the Herdade da Urguera hotel and as always appreciate their warm welcome and quiet comfortable hotel.
Saturday 13th May
OK day 1 (or is it day n?) drove to the Ops Center collected bits and bobs and went out to download data and check on the status of the lidars and APS. Unfortunately there was a major power outage during an electrical storm on Thursday 11th May, but power has been restored. Went to the Ops center and then to the Olive Co-op (arrived 10:30 LOCAL). APS has power but stopped recording 05/11/2017 14:36 UTC when the power dropped out. The inlet was partly/mainly obscured 05/03/2017 until we arrived today - it seems when the nice folks from DLR plugged into our power bar at the Olive Coop they blocked the inlet to the APS so 3-13 May are 'dead data'. Fortunately the APS pump did not blow out (its a bit noisy but still running!). Other news from the Olive Coop site is that the SpiDAR operation continues to be patchy but the ZephIR is working well. Went onto the Orange Grove site... The Galion is running great - though it does get more hard target returns from the huts, cylinders and people now present at the site - we have KINDLY asked people stay east and north of the Galion scan pattern but theres not much to be done about the installation of the huts in the Galion VAD scan cone.... (later this week we decided on two solutions; build a fence and remove the lowest scan angle so as long as people are > 4 m from the Galion it over shoots them). The ZephIR at the Orange Grove is also running well. We returned to the Olive Co-op later in the day to do a bit more detective work on the intermittency issue... (more later in the week). Rain started around 17:00 Local so 'rain stopped play'! Other news of note - Steve O is still instrumenting towers -- apparently the 48th tower was installed/instrumented today...
ZephIR and SpiDAR still running at the Olive Co-op!
APS restarted with no ill-effects...I'm glad I'm not an entomologist!
Looks like we could be getting some more wake data from the Galion!
Sunday 14th May
Spent some time this morning on data processing (mainly of the Galion) and then did a quick trip to the Olive Coop and the Orange Grove to check on the instruments. It looked a little unsettled so we decided to wait until tomorrow to go up onto the ridge to check on the seismometers. This PM more progress on the data processing... (see an example below!).
A great day for Portugal, victory in the Eurovision Song Contest, a visit from the Pope and a festival today (I don't think its in our honor!)
A sample of a wind turbine wake from 4th May.. the panels show the individual elevation angles, the black * is the WT and the colors denote the radial velocities.
The following 10-minute period on 4th May 2017 ... also showing a WT wake as measured by the Galion scanning lidar.
Monday 15th May
Came up the SW ridge to service the seismometers. Arrived at RiSW06 at 10:00 LOCAL (yes our SEAT made it up the track!!)..Ok here are some boring details:RiSW06: GPS not locking, but data collecting! RiSW05: GPS locking, and data collecting! RiSW03: GPS not locking, but data collecting fine! Completed service at 12:10 Local. Noticed during our time on the ridge that Enercon are servicing the Turbine (this continued through the next day also). Visited both the Olive Coop and the Orange Grove and downloaded data... the temperature started to really ramp up today with 37C!
Glorious location for one of the DLR lidars!
Seismometer site SWRi06
Seismometer site SWRi05
Tuesday 16th May
Met with Steve O and a crew of volunteers and went to install his 'ladder' tower on the RiSE transect... Then went to the Olive Co-op. We think a partial explanation for the SpiDAR not writing all files is the storage cards made be close to capacity (unfortunately can't verify this since the system will ONLY allow Filezilla access!) so we cleaned off some old data in the hope this will free up space. In the afternoon the temperatures REALLY soared (>37 C) - the search for shade become important for us and unfortunately we had the first thermal shutdown of the Galion and a near thermal shutdown of the APS and us! (Oh and in case you are wondering - long-sleeved blouses because I got dreadfully sun-burnt yesterday!) Other notes: Galion thermal shutdown was at 14:22:56 UTC. Some details of major 'interuptions' in the Galion data; Started measuring 01/25/2017, shutdown on 02/21/2017, power cut 03/10/2017-03/16/2017 and 03/18/2017-03/22/2017, 03/30/2017-04/02/2017, 04/30/2017, 05/05/2017, 05/11/2017-05/12/2017, and thermal shutdown 05/16/2017 (all others were power interuptions)
Good grief...Its not even summer yet! :-(
Trying desperately to cool off (me and the APS!)
Wednesday 17th May
Came to Orange Grove arrived 09:30 local. We have installed some stakes and some 'flagging' to try to stop people walking in the scan of the Galion and also have devised a new scan pattern to remove the lowest elevation scan. So those were implemented today. Galion had restarted using Perd_Turb5. Stopped it and uploaded the new scan definition - Perd_Turb6. the new scan started at 10:22 Local. Heavy-ish rain started about 10:30 local... the Galion did one new scan and stopped! so restarted at 10:41 local. Downloaded ZephIR data and verified the Galion ran 2 of the new scans and left 10:55 Local. Went to Olive Co-op and arrived at 11:12 Local. Turbine is oriented to NE but not turning and appears Enercon are working on it? Downloaded data from APS, SpiDAR and ZephIR. Returned later to Orange Grove to upload a slightly modified scan file to the Galion after finding Perd_Turb6 was taking longer than 10 min. It preserves the RHI scans the 3 VAD and the arc scans but slightly trims further the two lowest arc scans... 288 lines in the scan pattern. Turbine back running by 17:00 local.
You know you love your computer when you keep it dry and you get rained on!
Winching something up the turbine!
Downloading the APS data
Our new flagging solution at the Orange Grove
Thursday 18th May
Cloud free and cooler, breezier conditions, northerly flow (12.5C at 09:30 local). Turbine running. Came to Orange Grove and collected data from the Perd_Turb7 runs, also collected ZephIR data and topped up washer fluid. Very strong shear at this site at 10:00 Local. Went to Olive Co-op arrived 10:35 local. Topped up ZephIR washer fluid, download data from ZephIR, SpiDAR and APS. Very low aerosol Conc. 2 microg/m3. Went back to Orange Grove to force a ZephIR wipe and saw the 12:00 UTC rawinsonde launch. Afternoon analysis of data from seismometers and contact with PASSCAL about possible data offset on one of the geophones. Verified all OK though they are not sure why the GPS lock keeps failing...We are treating ourselves to dinner at the Herdade restaurant since it is our last evening here (until next time of course....)
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