Celtic Sea Power (CSP) and engineering firm Wood have developed a new wind resource model for the Celtic Sea.
The partners targeted existing data gaps to form a large-scale regional picture of the area, potentially accelerating offshore wind development by up to two years.
Significantly, CSP said the model is “bank grade” and utilises wind and metocean datasets recently acquired from three of the first floating LiDAR systems (FLS) ever deployed offshore within the Celtic Sea.
This includes data sourced from CSP’s own operations and a data sharing arrangement with a commercial partner.
Wood and CSP validated the input data against two mesoscale regional models and further calibration then produced the bankable wind resource model which is now available with long-term mean wind speeds for the region.
The mean wind speeds for the two offshore CSP FLS locations indicated the planned 4.932GW of FLOW deployment in the Celtic Sea by 2035 could produce enough electricity on an annual basis to meet the current electricity needs of over eight million UK homes.
The FLS buoys were also fitted with wave sensors to show maximum heights for the two FLS locations. Alongside the wind resource data, this new information can support early design considerations for appropriate floating offshore wind structures in the Celtic Sea.
It also provides early insights into potential future operations planning and ecosystem impacts.
Wood provided data analysis services and delivering its view, as an experienced lender’s technical authority, on the veracity of the modelled data and the extent of its spatial certainty.
“The regional wind resource model developed provides a high level of confidence regarding the available wind resource in the areas of The Crown Estate Planned Development Area region in the Celtic Sea and is considered to be suitable to underpin bank-grade energy yield assessment,” said Wood’s director of analysis (clean energy) Iain Nisbet
CSP said its approach also demonstrated the value of collaboration between developers for reciprocal benefit – without compromising commercial interests.
A data-sharing arrangement has been established to enable collaboration between commercial developers with an interest in a robust data bank on the Celtic Sea wind resource. To date, seven developers have formally signed up to this agreement, including Flotation Energy, which provided a third FLS dataset from its 100MW White Cross test and demonstration site.
“We were delighted to collaborate with Celtic Sea Power to build a model which is sufficiently robust to provide bank grade yield analysis,” said Flotation Energy’s project director for White Cross Al Rayner.
“It shows just how important test and demonstration sites like White Cross are in helping future projects save time and money during the development phase.”
CSP intends to continue improving the model as new wind and metocean data becomes available, to further increase spatial and temporal coverage alongside confidence levels.