Metocean conditions at two Norwegian sites for development of offshore wind farms

Etienne Cheynet, Lin Li and Zhiyu Jiang

Renewable Energy, 2024, vol. 224, issue C

Abstract: This paper examines metocean data from NORA3, a state-of-the-art wind and wave hindcast dataset for Northern Europe. Two offshore Norwegian areas, Utsira Nord (UN) and Sørlige Nordsjø II (SN2), are investigated. Both areas offer significant potential for the offshore wind sector. UN is situated in deep-sea water, suitable for floating offshore wind turbines. In contrast, SN2 lies in intermediate waters and ranks among the North Sea’s most promising regions allocated for offshore wind. Data from NORA3, originally on a 3-km resolution grid, are resampled into unstructured grids spanning from 1982 to 2022. This refined dataset offers a climatology time scale with superior spatial and temporal resolution compared to most other hindcast and reanalysis databases. The study examines mean wind speed and direction across seven levels, ranging from 10 m to 750 m above the surface. Analyses of extreme wind and wave conditions have been conducted. Results reveal that UN experiences higher extreme wave heights than SN2 while the extreme wind speeds may be substantially larger at SN2 than UN. Moreover, this study establishes joint distribution models that encompass several parameters, including mean wind speed, significant wave height, wave spectral peak period, and direction difference between wind and waves. Thus, this metocean data is valuable for designing and analyzing floating wind farms over their lifecycles.

Keywords: Wind energy; NORA3; Wind atlas; Metocean conditions; Offshore wind turbine (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:224:y:2024:i:c:s0960148124002490

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2024.120184

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