industry update
Offshore wind energy comes one step closer to North America
A world-class and innovative marine meteorological station has been installed offshore by NaiKun Wind Energy Group Inc. at its project site off the coast of Haida Gwaii (the Queen Charlotte Islands) in north western British Columbia under permit from the Haidi Power Authority.
The $2.5 million offshore station is the first of its kind and will support the first phase of a 320 MW offshore wind energy development located in an area as the Haida Energy Field (HEF). The project itself also aims to be a first - North America’s first west coast offshore wind site with construction expected to begin in 2009.
NaiKun have equipped the station with a ZephIR® laser anemometer to provide wind speed and direction up to 150 metres in height, removing the need for any additional mast. Several other high-tech instruments able to measure and collect data showing atmospheric conditions, wave & current climate, and air and sea temperatures have also been installed.
Ray Castelli, President and CEO of NaiKun WInd Development commented that:
"the installation of the marine meteorological station is a critical step forward for the NaiKun project. The station is equipped with the most sophisticated measurement instruments available and will assist the company in pre-engineering and construction planning This is one of the most advanced meteorological stations available and much of the design, componentry and assembly was done here in BC with local companies."
Offshore met station © NaiKun Wind Energy Group Inc. 2007
Sandwell Engineering of Vancouver assisted NaiKun with the design of the meteorological station structure and co-ordination of installation, while Natural Power provided the ZephIR® system which will gather 150 data points every three seconds at each user defined height, giving horizontal and vertical wind speed, wind direction and turbulence.
Peter Hunter, VP of Design and Construction has heralded the met station as a success demonstrating the viability of similar offshore platforms for the proof of concept phase in offshore wind farms.
"Wind resource measurement has advanced greatly over the last few years with equipment like ZephIR® reducing the cost and risk of projects that NaiKun develop. It is essential we continue to use such new technology to make offshore wind energy a reality."
French Turkey for Christmas
To date, the technical team working out of our office in Strasbourg, France have been involved as wind resource assessment and siting experts on projects in Slovakia, Poland, France and increasingly, Turkey. Thanks to a revision of the market conditions, linked to an expanding economy and a tightening of energy supply, the Turkish market is set to expand rapidly, and soon. Though our exclusive technical services partnership with Re-consult, Turkey's leading project development consultancy, Natural Power is ideally placed to participate in this growth. Re-consult takes projects from site prospecting to financial close for third parties and has also earned the crown as one of the more credible locally-based wind measurement specialists in Turkey. Re-consult's clients include many of the world’s leading utilities and investors. Over the past few months, Re-consult and Natural Power have designed more than 2.4 GW of projects for submission to the electricity regulator, and performed due diligence on 150 MW.
written by Oisin Brady
Long term data for long term wave projects
Natural Power are currently finalising up a project for The Crown Estate looking at long term buoy data for use in energy yield prediction for wave energy projects. Following on from our 15 years experience of the wind industry we realised that there was a variety of issues concerning long term data that could be tackled now, before large wave energy projects become a reality.
In the wind industry the issue of long term data has been one that has impacted on energy yield prediction for some time. A level of certainty in long term data set leads to uncertainty in energy yield with subsequent impacts on financing issues. Tightening up the certainty of long term data means the energy yield can be given with more certainty and the less equity will need to be found to satisy banks when seeking debt. In the wind industry it has taken many years to address long term data issues, and with hindsight this could have been tackled at an early stage in the development of the industry.
Seeing a similar problem looming in the wave industry, Natural Power has worked with The Crown Estate to address this issue. We have now spent the past eight months reviewing all of the live (and some historical) data sets in UK and Irish waters. The sets were analysed for overlapping records and mapped over prospective wave energy sites that the industry and government are strategically focused on. Removing the data sets that were badly located we found a grand total of 15 potential long term data sets.
The project then moved into an analysis phase of looking into the data records for each buoy and retrieving the metadata records. The metadata effectively answers a series of questions about the data:
- Where was data recorded?
- What instruments were used?
- When were they serviced?
- How is the data processed?
- What did the recording device look like?
In partnership with the Met Office and Met Éireann we were able to address the data collection, processing and archiving processess from a wave energy perspective.
The project report is currently being submitted to The Crown Estate, and the full results will be available for public dissemination in the very near future. For more information about the project please email rossh@naturalpower.com.
Advanced Tools and Capability assisting the Re-powering of UKs First Wind Farm
Natural Power are currently assisting Good Energy in the re-powering of the iconic Delabole wind farm in North Cornwall. First commissioned in 1991, Delabole was the UK's first commercial wind farm. The project currently has a capacity of 4MW, consisting of 10 x 400kW wind turbines.
Good Energy, the UK's only 100% renewable electricity supplier and owners of the Delabole project, aim to replace the existing turbines at the project. A second generation of modern, more efficient wind turbines will generate greater amounts of green electricity for many years to come.
On announcing the plans to re-power Delabole, Juliet Davenport, Chief Executive of Good Energy said:
"There are a number of possibilities for the new layout of the site. They all include larger turbines and less of them. The bigger the turbines we use, the less we will need. Our aim is to prevent over one million tonnes of carbon dioxide being released into our atmosphere."
Natural Power have been engaged in the project to provide technical expertise, resource analysis and data collection services to the project.
A combination of production data analysis and remote sensing data collection are being employed to provide assistance in the layout design, turbine selection and financing of the re-powered project.
By employing our Melogale™ SCADA data analysis suite and the ZephIR® laser anemometer we will be providing Good Energy with a bankable prediction of the site wind regime. This unique combination of tools has the ability to accurately and efficiently provide Good Energy with a high level of confidence in the future yield predictions for the re-powered wind farm.