Wind and Metocean Campaign to Enhance Offshore Wind Data
TGS, a leading provider of energy data and intelligence, has announced a new campaign for offshore wind and metocean measurement located in Morro Bay, off the U.S. West Coast.
TGS said the initiative further expands the company’s multi-client wind and metocean measurement initiatives. It will also greatly enhance the industry’s understanding of offshore conditions across three wind energy lease areas in Morro Bay, calibrating TGS proprietary wind models with observational data.
The three-year deployment in an area with an average depth of 1,000 m. (3,300 feet) will be the first by TGS to be located on the West Coast of the U.S. The data gathered will offer insights throughout the floating windfarm development lifecycle.
This includes environmental impact assessments and technical decisions such as turbine selection, layout optimization, foundation design and operations, and maintenance planning. It will also enable more accurate modeling of capital expenditure, operational expenditure, potential energy production, and grid requirements.
The campaign is supported by funding from the offshore wind industry and is due to be launched in Q3 2024.
The company said that ocean current measurements and tidal information collected over the course of the campaign will be valuable for grid connection planning, while accurate atmospheric turbulence intensity observations will provide key inputs for windfarm energy yield.
TGS will use a buoy supplied by Eolus Solutions equipped with sensors designed to capture detailed measurements of wind, metocean, and environmental data. Key metrics include wind speed and direction at turbine hub height, wave heights, ocean current data across the full water column, and monitoring of birds, bats and fish.
Data will be continuously streamed, quality controlled, and made available daily to customers via Wind AXIOM, TGS’ site evaluation and wind data analytics platform. The multi-client approach will allow multiple customers to subscribe to the same floating LiDAR data, thus reducing development costs and timelines.