Posters

Abstract

The offshore wind industry continues to expand, both in terms of installed capacity and out from its North Sea heartland. Whilst this is generally great news for the Wind industry, rapid growth represents a wide range of challenges, one of which is to maintain energy yield prediction accuracy and hence the confidence of investors. As the offshore wind industry evolves wind farms are built using more and taller turbines with larger rotors, and in areas with more neighbours. As a result, wake effects are increasing with factors such as blockage effect, long distance turbine interaction, high density (MW/km²) sites and large neighbouring clusters becoming hot topics. Furthermore as tip heights reach above 200m the likelihood that a proportion of the rotor will be impacted by wind conditions above the boundary layer increases which presents a significant flow modelling challenge. In addition, localised atmospheric conditions also influence energy yield. As large offshore projects outside the North Sea are relatively recent, the impact of these conditions in other regions of the world (and in some cases, in the North Sea) has not yet been adequately demonstrated. Here, operational data from over 60 offshore wind farms, representing more than 20GW of installed capacity, is used to assess the accuracy of pre-construction energy yield assessment methods. Although validation will always be some way behind current proposed technology as it is dependent on sufficient operational data, this study incudes some of the most recent projects and turbine models to have currently produced significant operational data. The featured sites are also situated across a range of offshore markets.