Influences of offshore environmental conditions on wind shear profile parameters in Nantucket Sound

Simultaneous wind resource and oceanographic data are available from an offshore monitoring tower in Nantucket Sound, off the coast of Massachusetts. These data provide an excellent opportunity to investigate how oceanographic data can be used to aid offshore wind resource assessment evaluations. This study considered whether wave height and/or tide height data could be used to improve the wind speed profile predictions of the ‘log law ’ model at this site. In the shallow, protected waters of Nantucket Sound, tidal variations were found to have little affect on the predicted mean wind profile. Standard roughness length models under-predicted the mean wind profile