WIND RESOURCE ASSESSMENT - WP4
FOW resource assessment systems are designed for deep water areas (>60m), where bottom fixed meteorological masts are no longer economically viable.
Installing a floating wind resource assessment system requires knowledge of the local wind and wave climate using a set of local floating instrumentations, remote sensing like satellites and LiDARs (Light Detection And Ranging) and/or fixed coastal meteorological masts. Even if measurement protocols based on floating LiDARs are already accepted as standard by the offshore wind energy industry, there is still a need to estimate the associated accuracy to capture the key parameters of the wind resource assessment, including wind speed and direction, turbulence intensity, spatial coherence across relevant length scales, and thermal stability. Indeed, the motion of instrumentation due to the floating platform induces measurement disturbances that must be corrected through sophisticated signal processing.
LiDAR measurement uses the horizontal homogeneity hypothesis that is incompatible with floating motion. Using fixed coastal meteorological masts free of motion can help with the site resource characterization, but such masts are often located far from the site of interest. As a result, correlations between local and remote measurements must be quantified.
The partners (DTU, ECN, EOLFI, IWES, LEOSPHERE, USTUTT, VORTEX) have long track-records in floating LiDAR technology and/or in full scale met-ocean measurements.
They will jointly address the following objectives:- Assess the wind and wave climate in deep waters, where bottom fixed meteorological masts are no longer viable
- Estimate the uncertainty and long-term inter-annual wind variability of the wind resource
- Develop novel data fusion techniques for resource assessment, including uncertainty quantification of resource estimates
- Quantify how the level of quality in the wind resource assessment can contribute to reducing the LCOE