New Dutch Offshore Wind Atlas Ready for Release

The ECN part of TNO, KNMI (the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute), and Whiffle, a Delft University of Technology spin-off, are releasing the new Dutch Offshore Wind Atlas on Thursday, 17 January.

The Dutch Offshore Wind Atlas (DOWA) is said to include an unprecedented level of detail where the wind is mapped up-to 600m in height and the daily variability of the wind captured for all to view.

With this information, the Dutch government and wind farm developers can plan, build and operate offshore wind farms even more efficiently, the developers said.

• Wind speed and direction information across the whole Dutch part of the North Sea, including the offshore wind development zones Borssele, Hollandse Kust Zuid and Hollandse Kust Noord;

• Wind speed and direction information ranging up to an altitude of 600m;

• Total coverage of 10 years up to 2017 and updated with 2018 wind information; and

• Spatial resolution of 2.5 km2 and wind information for every hour.

ECN part of TNO and KNMI validated DOWA against offshore measurement stations such as the meteorological mast IJmuiden, the fixed LiDARs on the offshore platforms Lichteiland Goeree, the Europlatform and the K13, and floating LiDARs in the offshore wind farm zones.

Particularly, the atlas demonstrates a mean wind speed deviation of less than 0.1m/s at all heights in the vertical wind shear profile up to 315m at the IJmuiden platform, the consortium said. Also, DOWA shows a very good representation of the daily cycle, where the accuracy in terms of model bias is improved by 16% as compared to previous data.