Fugro’s Seawatch Wind Lidar Buoy has achieved the stage 3 rating, in accordance with the Carbon Trust Roadmap for the Commercial Acceptance of floating LiDAR technology. This Stage 3 rating, certifies the Seawatch Wind Lidar Buoy as a primary source of wind resource data to support financial investment decisions for offshore wind farms.Following the first concept studies in 2009, Fugro performed a series of experiments in 2011 in collaboration with Christian Michelsen Research (CMR) to investigate the effect of motion on a profiling wind lidar operating on Fugro’s Wavescan buoy. Promising results led to the production of the first commercial Seawatch Wind Lidar Buoy in 2013. The Carbon Trust Roadmap was issued that same year and 2 years later the Seawatch Wind Lidar Buoy was type-validated as Stage 2 (pre-commercial) based on a successful offshore met mast validation trial. Since then, more than 50 Seawatch floating lidar systems from Europe to North America and East Asia have generated a track record of commercial offshore deployments.
