POW WOW Virtual laboratories and best practice guides for the prediction of Waves Wakes and Offshore

International audienceThis paper describes a new project trying to harmonise approaches to wave and wind modelling offshore, helping the short-term forecasting and wake research communities by establishing virtual laboratories, offering specialised workshops, and setting up expert groups with large outreach in the mentioned fields. Currently, a good number of research projects is underway on the European and national level in the fields of short-term forecasting of wind power, offshore wind and wave resource prediction, and offshore wakes in large wind farms. The leaders of those research projects are assuming the function of a multiplier towards the larger research and user community. In the fields of short-term forecasting and offshore energy resource, Expert Groups will be formed to act as the central focus point for external stakeholders. The liaison with other groups will also include groups outside of Europe. To facilitate the spread of knowledge, a number of workshops is planned. One of them took place just before this conference on the topic of best practice in the use of short-term forecastingsystems, where utilities with a combined experience of over 50 years and a combined wind power installation of over 30 GW could share their experiences and views on the best use of those systems. A preliminary overview of the resulting best practice guide will be given. One issue hampering the progress in our fields is the difficulty of getting access to good data. In most cases, data on offshore wind or power is strictly confidential, and also data on onshore wind power, especially in conjunction with numerical weather predictions, is not easy to come by. One example of a good testing procedure comes from the Anemos project, where in all 6 test cases were defined, to be run by all involved institutes. This idea is taken to the next level with the set-up of two Virtual Laboratories, one for offshore wake modelling, the other one for short-term forecasting. Both laboratories will be well-defined and maybe already open for business by the time of the workshop