Meteorological equipment specialist Biral is supplying 140 of its SWS-050 visibility sensors to be used as part of the Hollandse Kust Zuid project in the Netherlands – one of the largest offshore wind farms in the world.
The sensors will be used to control the aviation obstruction lights on top of the turbines for marking tech developer Orga. As part of the project, Siemens Gamesa will install an SWS-050 sensor onto each selected wind turbine, which will have a maximum height of 251m above sea level and minimum capacity of 6MW. The Hollandse Kust Zuid project is permitted to have 252 wind turbines in total.
Biral’s SWS-050 visibility sensor can operate in temperatures ranging from -40ºC to +60ºC and is unaffected by local lights or reflections. With a measurement range of 10m to 40km, the sensor is also suitable for use in road and aviation applications, as well as meteorological observation networks.
In addition, the measurement accuracy exceeds that specified by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for visibility sensors used in METAR and RVR applications.
Hollandse Kust Zuid will be built by energy firm Vattenfall in an area 18km off the coast of the Netherlands between The Hague and Zandvoort. It will be divided into four parcels, with the first two approximately 115km2 in size and the remaining two measuring about 110km2. The wind farm is expected to be in operation by 2023, with a capacity of 770MW.
The Dutch government has pledged that by 2023, 16% of the energy consumed in the country will be generated in a sustainable way. It is aiming for offshore wind farms to be supplying 4,500MW of power by this date, although this presently stands at just 1,000MW.
Nathan Neal, sales and marketing director at Biral, said, “This is a great project for Biral and we are very pleased to have won this significant contract in partnership with our friends from Orga, who were up against stiff competition for the whole contract. It clearly shows our technology, reliability and measuring accuracy leads the way in this often difficult application. We look forward to building upon this with other major renewal energy contracts worldwide.”