TGS, a global provider of energy data and intelligence, will conduct a new campaign for offshore wind and metocean measurement in Morro Bay, off the US West Coast.
The deployment is supported by funding from the offshore wind industry and is expected to be launched in the third quarter of 2024.
The campaign seeks to enhance the understanding of offshore conditions across three wind energy lease areas in Morro Bay. TGS will carry out its campaign at sites where Equinor, Ocean Winds, and Invenergy plan to build their floating offshore wind projects.
The three-year deployment in an area with an average depth of 1,000 metres will be the first by TGS on the West Coast of the US. It will add to its comprehensive library of wind and metocean data collected on the East Coast of the US, Norway, and Germany.
The data gathered will offer insights throughout the floating wind farm development lifecycle, including environmental impact assessments and technical decisions such as turbine selection, layout optimization, foundation design, and operations and maintenance planning.
Additionally, it will enable more accurate modeling of capital expenditures (CAPEX), operational expenditures (OPEX), potential energy production, and grid requirements, said TGS.
Ocean current measurements and tidal information collected over this period will be valuable for grid connection planning, while accurate atmospheric turbulence, according to the company.
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The buoy, which will be supplied by EOLOS, will be equipped with advanced sensors designed to capture detailed measurements of wind, metocean, and environmental data. Key metrics include wind speed, and direction at turbine hub height, wave heights, ocean current data across the full water column, and monitoring of birds, bats, and fish.
As with all wind and metocean campaigns conducted by TGS, the multi-client approach will allow multiple customers to subscribe to the same floating LiDAR data, which should reduce development costs and timelines.
Similar initiatives have already been deployed on the East Coast of the US, in Germany, and offshore Norway, where fleet-wide LiDAR data availability averages 94 per cent across all TGS deployments at a 140-metre measurement height, said the company.