Providing fast assessment of MetOcean conditions for offshore wind farms

In order to reduce costs and increase competitiveness for offshore wind farm developments, DONG Energy wanted to be able to establish local certified MetOcean criteria in less than four months. To do this, they needed to establish MetOcean conditions for the structural design and operation of offshore wind turbines, substations, and related infrastructure.

In close collaboration with DONG Energy, we used the expertise gained from developing data sets for the marine and energy industries in the seas of Northern Europe to create an extensive, validated, and documented database. The easily accessible, in-house, all-in-one database is supplemented with pre-conducted analyses relevant for planning, operating, and designing offshore wind farms. 

We established, validated, and documented a robust, accurate, consistent long-term data basis through a combination of: 

• available meteorological data, in-situ measurements and satellite data 
• extensive modelling of hydrodynamic and wave conditions using MIKE Powered by DHI’s MIKE 21 hydrodynamic (HD) – including data assimilation – and 3rd generation spectral wave (SW) models

We adopted the meteorological data from the global Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) and validated it for accuracy and consistency in Northern Europe. Simulations of water level and current conditions were conducted using our MIKE 21 flow model with boundary conditions from our Global Tide model and meteorological forcing from CFSR. The third generation wind-wave model (MIKE 21 SW) applied full spectral boundary conditions from our global spectral wave model and wind forcing from CFSR.

Together with DONG Energy, we successfully applied the data for several local wind farm projects during the development of the MetOcean database. In addition, DONG Energy independently extracted data and information from the database for other projects.