A campaign to gather more than two years’ worth of wind data crucial for the development of the 3600MW Ossian floating offshore wind farm has been completed.
Two Floating Lidar buoys (pictured) have been deployed to survey the 858 square kilometre site, 84km off the east coast of Scotland, since August 2022.
Using profiling lasers, the buoys measure wind speed and direction at 10 different sample heights rising up from the surface of the North Sea to a maximum height of 300 metres.
Assessment of the data is essential for the project’s design and understanding the wind resource potential across the project site, one of the largest to be offered by Crown Estate Scotland to any bidder in the ScotWind leasing round.
Ossian is a joint venture between SSE Renewables (40%), Marubeni (30%) and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (30%).
Ossian’s metocean and wind measurement campaign manager, Lucas Neidhardt said: “Gathering this information is vital to predicting energy yield, and therefore completing the campaign is another significant accomplishment for the project.
“Operating in the North Sea is not without its technical and environmental challenges and this campaign was no different.
“We are pleased with what has been achieved and confident of the quality of the data gathered.”
Delivery of the Ossian project will be subject to securing planning consent, route to market and a final investment decision.
Once operational, the offshore wind farm would have a capacity of up to 3.6GW which is enough to be capable of powering up to six million homes annually.
The wind measurement campaign was part of a package including a 12-month metocean campaign which gathered millions of data points relating to wave heights, currents, tides and sediment movements.
As well as underpinning engineering design and environmental impact assessment, the metocean data is also used to predict conditions during the construction and deployment of the wind farm.
The Ossian project is expected to provide a significant economic boost for the supply chain, with a multi-million-pound fund committed to support local orders and investments.