Wind Resource

This chapter considers the offshore wind resource and how it is likely to be translated into power production by large arrays of offshore wind turbines. Firstly, the characteristics of the offshore wind resource were studied using long-term reanalysis data from the ERA–40 dataset. For two offshore sites, a more in-depth prediction of the wind resource was made using a mesoscale model. Finally, the results of two studies of the characteristics of offshore wind farm wakes is presented, using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model and then inferred from scale model measurements in a meteorological wind tunnel