Offshore staff
OSLO, Norway – TGS has expanded its coverage of numerical weather prediction (NWP) model data.
The latest model covers a 400,000 sq km (154,441 sq mi) area off the East Coast US, extending from Massachusetts to North Carolina. It was selected to inform and enhance wind resource assessment in the New York Bight proposed sale notice areas, the company said.
This wind energy model was produced in collaboration with Vaisala to create a higher resolution dataset than publicly available with coverage over the key offshore wind industry focus areas in the East Coast.
These model results have been validated by publicly available measurements, including but not limited to floating lidar data, to increase confidence and improve data quality compared to other industry datasets, TGS said. It will be further enhanced with proprietary measurements later this year.
Wind developers and other industry stakeholders can compare their assessment of New York Bight areas with wind conditions over existing leases in their portfolio using this expansive high-resolution volume. According to the company, this capability facilitates a baseline for future validation and post-award analysis.
TGS will now include both US and Scotwind NWP models into a comprehensive atlas of public and proprietary wind data resources. Combined with TGS subsidiary 4COffshore’s market intelligence database, this provides a powerful resource enabling rapid, accurate evaluation of available data in existing leases, especially for future auctions, the company claimed.
Katja Akentieva, VP New Energy Solutions for Western Hemisphere at TGS, said: “Initial results reveal some interesting variations, spatial and temporal, which may impact various components of the wind farm design, construction and energy output.”
The NWP model has used Vaisala wind energy weather modelling technology, which is said to have performed well in benchmarking tests. Vaisala’s method draws on a combination of mesoscale NWP computer modeling, microscale wind modeling, and proprietary algorithms.
08/25/2021
