GVSU Completes First Phase of their Offshore Wind Assessment Campaign on Lake Michigan (USA)

AXYS Technologies Inc. (AXYS) congratulated Grand Valley State University (GVSU) on the successful completion of the first phase of their offshore wind resource assessment campaign on Lake Michigan.

The WindSentinel™ has been retrieved from its offshore deployment location and returned to its home base, where it will spend the next 3 months. During this time the MAREC joint project teams will complete their reviews of the initial system outputs ranging from wind speed and turbulence, to avian and bat information collected by the system.

 “Weather wise, November and December are two of the most challenging months on the Great Lakes, so it was a good field test for the research buoy’s capability” says Arnold (Arn) Boezaart, Director of Grand Valley’s Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center (MAREC).

“As we had only the highest expectations of the WindSentinel, we are not surprised that the system performed so well throughout the deployment” says Reo Phillips, Director of Operations at AXYS Technologies Inc. “We are extremely proud to have the industry’s leading offshore wind assessment solution, which allows organizations like MAREC to measure and analyse key wind profile data in near real time. Despite the winter conditions on the Lake, which saw ice build-up, sustained wind speeds in excess of 50 mph and greater then 20ft wave heights, the system continued to operate through these events without missing a beat”.

 “We were particularly pleased with the ease of deployment and recovery, with everything being deployed and retrieved in hours, including the mooring and anchor being recovered from the lake bed. This demonstrates how easily WindSentinel users will be able to conduct quality resource assessments with minimal impact on the surrounding environment”

This is the first time that a full production floating LIDAR has been deployed for this length of time, and the system performed according to the design specifications. This initial deployment has confirmed that the WindSentinel™ can supply hub height offshore wind resource assessment data at a fraction of the cost of a traditional offshore meteorological mast. AXYS looks forward to seeing a longer deployment by GVSU in the spring, and are also planning the next WindSentinel™ commissioning and deployment for Fishermen’s Energy at the end of the month, which will be used in a financing campaign off the coast of New Jersey.

The WindSentinel™ was constructed at the AXYS facility in Sidney, BC Canada over the last several months. The core sensing technology is Catch the Wind’s Vindicator®, which is a second-generation laser wind sensor that gathers data on wind speed, wind direction and turbulence at turbine hub-height and across the blade span.

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Offshore WIND staff, January 24, 2012; Image: axystechnologies