New visibility test plaques for wind turbines

Meteorological equipment specialists Biral has recently announced the launch of its new visibility test plaques for wind turbine aviation obstruction lights.

Visibility sensors are frequently used on wind turbines to adjust the brightness of aviation obstruction lights. This way, the brightness of the light is reduced as the meteorological conditions improve, visibility increases and the light pollution caused to residents is greatly reduced.

These newly developed test plaques demonstrate the correct operation of the aviation obstruction lights by reproducing the required visibility in the Biral sensor and triggering the change of brightness in the obstruction lights as the visibility changes.

Both at the initial construction phase and at regular intervals thereafter as part of general operational maintenance, there is a requirement to be able to test the correct operation of aviation obstruction lights on wind turbines. Biral’s test plaque demonstrates the correct operation of the aviation obstruction lights’ control system by reproducing the required visibility from the Biral sensor, triggering the change of brightness.

The test plaque is supplied to a customer specified, pre-configured visibility value. These test plaques can be fitted to any Biral SWS or VPF sensor and utilise the mounting points used by the calibration plaques. Each test plaque forces the Biral visibility sensor to report a known Meteorological Optical Range (MOR) as ascribed to each plaque. This MOR value is equivalent to a known visibility value.

This MOR output will then cause the lighting control system to adjust the brightness of the aviation obstruction lights. The MOR value for each test plaque is specified by the customer at the time of purchase. The MOR range available is 0.5 to 7.0km in increments of 0.1km. These test plaques are for use as a simulator only and are not designed for the calibration of Biral sensors.