The U.S. Energy Department (DOE) recently deployed the AXYS WindSentinel buoy off the coast of Atlantic City, New Jersey, to gather necessary data needed to plan future offshore wind deployments.
The buoy is one of the two the Energy Department owns. In December 2014, researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory deployed the other buoy near Virginia Beach, Virginia.
The buoy is equipped with a LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) device that shoots a series of lasers 650 feet into the sky and measures their reflection to characterize wind speeds at various altitudes. The buoy also uses additional meteorological and oceanographic instruments that record air and sea surface temperature, barometric pressure, relative humidity, wave height, and period, water salinity, and subsurface ocean currents.
The WindSentinel is operating at full capacity and is transmitting data to shore every 10 minutes.