The creation of a comprehensive metocean data set for offshore wind turbine simulations

Abstract

A database of meteorological and ocean conditions is presented for use in offshore wind energy research and design. The original data are from 23 ocean sites around the USA and were obtained from the National Data Buoy Center run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The data are presented in a processed form that includes the variables of interest for offshore wind energy design: wind speed, significant wave height, wave peak‐spectral period, wind direction and wave direction. For each site, a binning process is conducted to create conditional probability functions for each of these variables. The sites are then grouped according to geographic location and combined to create three representative sites, including a West Coast site, an East Coast site and a Gulf of Mexico site. Both the processed data and the probability distribution parameters for the individual and representative sites are being hosted on a publicly available domain by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, with the intent of providing a standard basis of comparison for meteorological and ocean conditions for offshore wind energy research worldwide. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.