Marine consultancy ABPmer is supporting offshore developer SSE Renewables in the development of the 520MW Arklow Bank 2 offshore wind farm off the east coast of Ireland.
ABPmer has been commissioned to prepare a preliminary site condition report and manage the associated metocean survey, which will then be used in conjunction with new numerical modelling to refine the preliminary results and inform a final site condition report.
SSE Renewables requires metocean information to support the design, installation and decommissioning phases of the development, ABPmer said.
The site condition reports provide SSE Renewables with a wide range of metocean statistics, as well as a description of the seabed morphology, sediment transport patterns and an assessment of scour potential.
This will allow the company to establish a broad and robust basis for engineering design and operational planning, which will be further refined and validated from the early planning stages through to final design.
ABPmer project manager David Lambkin said: “We regularly undertake metocean and morphological analysis for offshore wind farms but the mixture of relatively shallow water, stronger tidal currents and exposed wave climate make this a particularly interesting location to study.
“Our validated hindcast databases – Seastates – are the starting point for any metocean studies or parameters we provide and have been used to inform the preliminary report.
“As we move forward, this will be supplemented and validated with new data from a metocean survey and new high-resolution, site specific numerical modelling.”