Sampling Bias on Cup Anemometer Mean Winds

Abstract

AbstractThe cup anemometer signal can be sampled in several ways to obtain the mean wind speed. Here we discuss the sampling of series of mean wind speeds from consecutive rotor rotations, followed by unweighted and weighted averaging. It is shown that the unweighted averaging creates a positive bias on the long‐term mean wind speed, which is at least one order of magnitude larger than the positive bias from the weighted averaging, also known as the sample‐and‐hold method. For a homogeneous, neutrally stratified flow the first biases are 1%–2%. For comparison the biases due to fluctuations of the three wind velocity components and due to calibration non‐linearity are determined under the same conditions. The largest of these is the v‐bias from direction fluctuations. The calculations pertain to the Risø P2546A model cup anemometer. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.