The accuracy of energy yield assessments is of critical importance to wind farms investments, especially offshore, where significant project financing is required.
The relative maturity of this field for fixed foundation offshore is evidenced by the consistency of forecasts from activities like the CREYAP workshops. However, as recently as last year, an industry realisation that the effects of wind farm blockage may be under accounted in aerodynamic loss estimates reflects that improvements can still be made. Similarly, the advent of new technologies such as floating wind farms and hybrid wind/solar/storage farms represent the opportunity for large steps forward for the industry, but require new methods to account for them in yield assessments and business cases.
We operate at the forefront of this space, helping our clients using cutting-edge methods built around the fundamental understanding of how assets work and how they interact with the resource. We know the tools and modelling approaches that exist and are under development, and we appreciate how to use them, combine them and interpret their outputs. We have built our in-house processes around uncertainty, acknowledging that quantifying the impact of what you don't know allows you to better exploit what you do.
Our skills include:
- Wake and blockage loss calculations
- Floating LiDAR measurement campaign planning and data analysis
- Energy yield assessment practices for floating wind farms
- Energy yield assessments for hybrid wind/solar farms
- Business case development for design approaches such as overplanting.
Within floating wind specifically, we have over ten years’ experience of engineering design on behalf of MHI Vestas Offshore Wind, supporting with loads analysis, controller design, commissioning and performance analysis. We understand both the complex technologies and physics required to assess the yield and are currently leading the Carbon Trust Floating Wind JIP Yield workstream in this area.