WakeMap™ Validation at FINO Towers

Since its release in February 2022, WakeMap has gained significant traction among stakeholders in the offshore wind industry, increasingly in the North and Baltic Seas of Europe. As offshore wind clusters expand, the need for rigorous validation of WakeMap’s performance has become crucial.

Today, we’re excited to announce the release of our first European validation study, focusing on the FINO offshore measurement platforms in the North and Baltic seas. With long periods of record than span both free stream and waked wind conditions, these platforms provide an excellent framework to evaluate WakeMap’s capacity to accurately model wind speed deficits caused by wind farms.

Access the report here: https://lnkd.in/dMSVVkgE

Key highlights from the study:

1. Significant wind deficits: We found that long-term adjusted wind speeds have decreased 15% at both FINO-1 and FINO-2 due to presence of surrounding wind farms, while we found a more modest decrease of 4.7% at FINO-3.

2. Model Precision: We found very strong agreement between WakeMap’s modeled wind speed deficits and the observed data.

3. Parameter Sensitivity: Results were sensitive to the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) generation parameter in WakeMap’s Fitch wind farm parameterization scheme, highlighting the need for careful adjustment of the TKE parameter based on regional characteristics.

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to enhance WakeMap’s accuracy and reliability in the rapidly growing European offshore wind sector.

Future research will extend validations to the broad array of public floating LiDARs throughout European offshore waters, aiming to further optimize WakeMap for use in European offshore wind energy assessments.