In October 2023, our Floating LiDAR System performed exceptionally well during the verification campaign in Scotland, earning the OWA Stage 2 report from a third-party organization, Oldbaum. Currently, several Floating LiDAR products have reached Stage 2, and a few have even achieved Stage 3. However, there is still a lack of comparative data regarding their performance in extreme weather conditions.
The occurrence of Storm Babet presented a valuable opportunity to assess the performance of our Floating LiDAR System under intense local storm conditions.
The Philippines has abundant offshore wind resources. However, as a country prone to typhoons, it places extremely high demands on the robustness and resilience of Floating LiDAR wind measurements. We have summarized the number of typhoons that the Philippines has endured since 2000 in the table below.
Our device successfully recorded the entire passage of Storm Babet. Subsequent comparison with data from nearby met masts confirmed that our Floating LiDAR’s measurements align with OWA Roadmap Stage 2 Best Practice, demonstrating high accuracy and reliability even under harsh weather conditions.
Storm Babet was an extreme cyclone event that lasted 72 hours, from October 18 to 21, 2023. Throughout the storm, the Floating LiDAR remained stable and stayed within a safe proximity to the deployment zone.
The report also examined the motion characteristics and stability performance of the Floating LiDAR System. Analysis of operational data revealed that the platform maintained consistent mean Pitch and Roll values throughout the storm event, including both initial and final phases. The following figure illustrates the 10th to 90th percentile range of these motion parameters.
A key finding highlighted in the report states: “Importantly, this distribution is shown to be symmetrical about the 10-minute mean, which allows AB-FLS-NX5 to obtain quality wind measurements during extreme offshore conditions.”
The system’s exceptional motion stability serves as the foundation for obtaining reliable measurement data, both for ZX and WindCube LiDAR.
Performance results indicate complete (100%) system availability coupled with a post-processing data availability rate of over 96% for WindCube offshore V2.1 and over 98% for ZX 300M, substantially exceeding the benchmark KPIs established by the OWA Roadmap.
The summary figure demonstrates that the system (both LiDARs) satisfies all best-practice accuracy requirements at every verification height.
Several dozen units of this model AB-FLS-NX5 have successfully withstood over 10 typhoon events to date. The operational data from these extreme weather events provides valuable evidence of the system’s engineering excellence and suitability for challenging offshore deployments. This successful track record establishes the AB-FLS-NX5 as a dependable offshore wind resource measurement solution in typhoon-prone regions.