Celtic Sea Power have developed a wind resource model in association with Wood Group. The regional model has the potential to reduce the costs, risks and time of floating offshore wind (FLOW) development in the Celtic Sea.
The model is based on data from three floating LiDAR systems (FLS) positioned in close proximity to the Celtic Sea’s project development areas (PDAs) defined by the Crown Estate. Two of the FLS were deployed by CSP through the ERDF-funded Cornwall FLOW Accelerator program to provide at least 12 months’ worth of data.
This fresh approach to wind resource assessment led by CSP has major significance for emerging offshore wind markets in two regards; bankability and collaboration
Firstly, this work has demonstrated that a bankable model underpinning yield analysis across a large resource area ahead of project need can be achieved. Key to this is the strategic deployment of less measuring technology than may have been required otherwise
Wood is a global company that provide consultancy and engineering services across various sectors, including offshore wind. They supported this work by providing robust data analysis services and delivering their view, as an experienced lender’s technical authority, on the veracity of the modelled data and the extent of its spatial certainty. Iain Nisbet, Director of Analysis (Clean Energy), from Wood commented, “The regional wind resource model developed provides a high level of confidence regarding the available wind resource in the areas of The Crown Estate PDA region in the Celtic Sea and is considered to be suitable to underpin bank-grade energy yield assessment”
Secondly, CSP’s approach demonstrated the value of collaboration between developers for reciprocal benefit – without compromising commercial interests. From the basis of shared data from two ERDF-funded FLS, an innovative data-sharing arrangement has been established to enable collaboration between commercial developers with an interest in a robust, “bankable”, data on the Celtic Sea wind resource. To date, six developers have formally signed up to this agreement. This includes Flotation Energy who provided a third FLS dataset from their WhiteCross test and demonstration site.
Al Rayner, Project Director for White Cross Offshore Windfarm said “We were delighted to collaborate with Celtic Sea Power to build a model which is sufficiently robust to provide bank grade yield analysis. It shows just how important test and demonstration sites like White Cross are in helping future projects save time and money during the development phase.”
This programme of work has therefore provided much needed information on the wind resource in the Celtic Sea. CSP intend to continue improving the model as new wind and metocean data becomes available, to further increase spatial and temporal coverage alongside confidence levels.
It has the potential to provide future Celtic Sea FLOW Project developers with a yield analysis acceptable to investors without the need for additional FLS deployments saving development time, deployment costs and carbon emissions.
