LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Wind sensor technology developer Windar Photonics has been granted €0.5m in development funding from the Danish Energy Technology Development and Demonstration department (EUDP), it announced on Thursday.
The AIM-traded firm said the total project grants amount to €1.4m, and included the Technical University of Denmark and a leading European wind turbine manufacturer.

It said the aim of the granted project was to demonstrate LiDAR-assisted wind turbine control strategies for "robust and reliable improvements" on both currently-operating and new-build wind turbines.

The project would use Windar's LiDAR technology to detect strong wind gusts and, if possible, rain events that induced high loads and blade leading edge erosion respectively, and then adapt turbine control behavior and mitigate the impacts of those events.

It said the project would potentially expand the existing portfolio of LiDAR-assisted control-related offerings by Windar for the retrofit market for both onshore and offshore applications.

In addition, the project would also set the basis for the wind turbine manufacturer in the project to include LiDAR-assisted control for new wind turbine designs, with an emphasis on the next generation of large-scale offshore machines.

"I am very pleased that Windar's participation in this development project is alongside very strong partners within the industry," said chief executive officer Jørgen Korsgaard Jensen.

"In particular, I am excited about the potential add-on this might bring to our retrofit strategy.

"Our initial value proposition to the retrofit market segment was focused on yaw optimisation and higher energy extraction through our plug-and-play WindTimizer solution."

More recently, Jensen noted that the company introduced its load optimisation software upgrades for certain wake scenarios, with the project having the potential to further enhance its plug-and-play value propositions within the retrofit market for additional load reductions in relation to wind gust events.

"All with the aim of not only selling hardware equipment but additional software solutions/options for further optimisation purposes."

At 0818 GMT, shares in Windar Photonics were up 3.27% at 28,.4p.

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