A wind turbine blade is provided comprising a main blade portion and a light detection and ranging (LIDAR) element. The main blade portion has a shell defining an outer aerodynamic surface of the blade. The LIDAR element is disposed within a volume bounded by the outer aerodynamic surface and comprises at least one LIDAR system configured to transmit light beams away from the blade and to detect reflected light beams incident upon the blade.

A wind turbine blade is provided which comprises a main blade portion and a light detection and ranging (LIDAR) element, the main blade portion having a shell defining an outer aerodynamic surface of the blade, and the LIDAR element being disposed within a volume bounded by the outer aerodynamic surface and comprising at least one LIDAR system configured to transmit light beams away from the blade and to detect reflected light beams incident upon the blade, wherein the shell comprises at least one aperture extending at least partly through a thickness of the shell and containing optically transparent material, wherein the at least one LIDAR system is disposed within a volume bounded by an inner surface of the shell and is positioned to transmit and detect light beams through the optically transparent material, wherein the LIDAR element comprises a housing coupled to a surface of the blade within the volume bounded by the inner surface of the shell, the housing comprising a gyroscope mechanism coupled to the at least one LIDAR system such that an orientation of the at least one LIDAR system is substantially unaffected by movement of the blade so as to vary an angle at which light beams are transmitted through the optically transparent material as the blade moves.

A method to operate a wind turbine is provided, the method including determining a correction model associated with the wind turbine, determining a corrected turbulence intensity parameter associated with the wind turbine based on the correction model, and operating the wind turbine based on the corrected turbulence intensity parameter.

A fluidic structure configured to be mounted onto the hub of a fluidic turbine comprising a hub that rotates about a center axis, aligned to a main shaft that contributes torque to the main shaft of the turbine via the principle of lift and/or drag. The fluidic structure can be rigid or have some flexibility. The structure has two or more curved fluidic elements that extend from an upstream tip that aligns to the center axis of rotation, to a downstream end at some further radial position away from the center axis, and rotates about the center axis, wherein the two or more curved fluidic elements contain chord sections that are generally more wide at the upstream position and general more narrow at the downstream position.

The present invention relates to a method of determining the direction of the wind by a LiDAR sensor (2). This method comprises performing measurements by the LiDAR sensor (2), deducing a Gaussian distribution of the longitudinal (u) and transverse (v) components of the wind speed, and determining wind direction (θ) by a spherical cubature approximation method and of the Gaussian distribution of the longitudinal and transverse components of the wind speed.

The present invention is a method for predicting the wind speed in the rotor plane (PR) of a wind turbine (1), by accounting for an induction factor used in a wind evolution model implemented by a Kalman filter. The invention also is a method for controlling a wind turbine (1), a computer program product, a LiDAR sensor (2) and a wind turbine (1), which uses the wind prediction determined with the method according to the invention.

The present disclosure relates to a control system for a wind turbine that is configured to: obtain a 3-dimensional image of at least a portion of a wind turbine blade; recognise a target feature of the wind turbine blade in the obtained image and identify the position of the target feature; and monitor the state of the wind turbine blade and/or control operation of at least one blade in dependence on the identified position of the feature.

A laser radar device calculates a wind speed for each of a plurality of divided sections obtained by dividing a trajectory drawn by a laser beam in front of a wind turbine.

The invention relates to a method of determining the vertical profile of the wind speed upstream from a wind turbine (1), wherein wind speed measurements are performed by means of a LiDAR sensor (2), then the exponent of the power law is determined by means of an unscented Kalman filter and measurements, and this exponent is applied to the power law in order to determine the vertical wind speed profile.

Summarizing, the present invention relates to a control system for a wind turbine includinga feed forward controller having a rotor effective wind speed of the wind turbine as an input parameter and having a plurality of output parametersa feedback controller wherein an input parameter is based on a rotor speed or a generator speed of the wind turbine and having at least one output parameter and wherein o one output parameter of the feed forward controller is provided to the feedback controller as an input parameter and o another output parameter of the feed forward controller is used as a feed-forward control parameter for controlling the wind turbine and o one output parameter of the feedback controller is used as a feed-back control parameter for controlling the wind turbine, as well as a wind turbine and a control method.