Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), working with AWS Truepower of Albany, New York, has installed a Windcube at WHOI’s Martha’s Vineyard Coastal Observatory (MVCO), located two miles south of Martha’s Vineyard in the Outer Continental Shelf. Funding for the installation was provided by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) as part of its Metocean Initiative, designed to advance the planning and permitting of offshore wind energy in the region.
Renewable NRG Systems supplied the Lidar and will perform biennial maintenance services. Located in a fixed position on the MVCO’s Air-Sea Interaction Tower (ASIT) platform, the Lidar will provide a continuous record of the wind resource across the full vertical rotor span of wind turbines used in offshore wind farms. The collected data will be used for validation and improvement of existing wind models, as well as to increase industry and regulatory confidence in the value of the wind resources off Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The Lidar will also serve as a reference in the future for validating floating Lidars that could be deployed within nearby commercial Wind Energy Areas to provide bankable, on-site data for project development purposes.
