PNNL floating offshore lab collects wind energy data

On Friday, researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory said it was collecting atmospheric, oceanographic and environmental data about wind energy.

Part of the Wind Forecast Improvement Project 3 (WFIP3) team, PNNL and its collaborators have been able to deploy data gathering instruments across a wide array of land sites, as well as launch a lidar buoy off the coast of Massachusetts. The goal, researchers said, is to improve offshore wind forecasting to lower the costs and risks associated with offshore wind energy development. The team also deployed a large research barge in June.

Funding by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Wind Energy Technologies Office, and composed of experts from more than a dozen research institutions, PNNL oversees the WFIP3 barge’s instruments while the Woods hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) manages the barge.

“Deploying barges for longer periods is not generally done, so our interdisciplinary group of scientists created or adapted a number of the planning and support systems,” WHOI physical oceanographer Anthony Kirincich said. “It’s my hope that future projects will be able to stand on our shoulders to carry out longer deployments at sea with fewer resources.”

Additional collaborators include Argonne National Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the University of Notre Dame.

“This novel instrumented barge enables us to obtain time-varying profiles of an array of vital variables at a single location for characterizing the marine atmospheric boundary layer—the part of the atmosphere that directly contacts and is influenced by the ocean—which was not possible using conventional research vessels,” said Notre Dame professor of engineering and geosciences Harindra Joseph Fernando.

Researchers said the measurements collected will provide the wind energy industry with unprecedented amounts of information about turbulence, atmospheric stability and wind characteristics. The mostly battery and solar panel powered barge will remain at sea through Fall 2024 when the team will transfer instrumentation to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel to better withstand harsher winter weather.

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