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Utilising Youwind for Enhanced Offshore Wind Energy: The Power of Wave Data

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The development of the wind energy industry faces several challenges, one of the most critical being the accurate quantitative portrayal and forecast of wind fields. Coastal structures and environments are significantly impacted by wave activity, which influences sediment transport, coastal erosion, and other coastal hazards. Particularly, extreme waves are crucial in affecting coastal infrastructure and the environment. Changes in the characteristics of extreme and mean waves are notable and are often associated with the increased frequency of extreme events. 

To address these challenges, Youwind integrates ERA5 Reanalysis data into the platform. ERA5 is the fifth-generation global atmospheric reanalysis produced by the ECMWF, offering data from 1940 to the present with a temporal resolution of 1 hour, a horizontal resolution of 0.25º, and 137 vertical levels. Our platform leverages ERA5’s wind speeds, wind directions, wave heights, and wave periods, enabling comprehensive seasonal assessments, evaluations of extreme conditions, and reliable risk analyses. 

How Youwind handle innovation?

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At Youwind, we are constantly working to improve our platform by adding new features to continue to chase technical innovation and make  our platform more user-friendly for our users in the offshore wind sector.   

In this article, we will be answering some questions related to the process we use at Youwind to better understand the needs of our clients and how we improve our solution for their needs. We will be addressing topics such as client needs, internal suggestions, quality testing, and others.  

How do we decide what to work on next?  

Our onboarding and operational process allow us to have a good relationship with all our users and it is that same relationship that allows us to better understand their needs and concerns. We very much appreciate this valuable insight as it is a very powerful tool for us to continue improving our platform, and to be able to provide the best service to our users.

On many occasions, we discover that different users have similar needs, and often we have had the same request from different users, coming in over a small period. This is very useful to us because it helps us prioritize what we should build next, helping us maximise results for our users. 

We also take advantage of our team of experts who are working constantly to find new ways to improve the platform, to provide a better service for our users.

Understanding Environmental Impacts of Offshore Wind Energy

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We can all agree that the offshore wind energy sector is becoming pivotal in the world’s efforts to decarbonize the atmosphere and that renewable energy sources are increasingly more popular.  However, we must admit that there are some drawbacks and environmental impacts that are caused by the production of offshore wind energy.  In this article we will walk through some of these.   

Birds  

Wind turbines can pose risks to bird populations, causing disturbances in flight paths and in extreme cases, mortality. Birds may collide with turbine blades, towers, nacelles, and other structures like meteorological masts and offshore substations, resulting in fatal injuries. Several factors regarding wind turbines affect bird mortality: 

  • Design and Arrangement: The specific design and layout of turbines can significantly impact collision rates. 
  • Species and Climate: Different bird species and climatic conditions also play a key role.  
  • Location and Layout: The angle at which birds approach turbines correlates with collision probability. 

Marine Species  

The construction of wind turbine foundations and towers can increase seawater turbidity and introduce additional structures onto the seabed, potentially harming benthic fauna and flora. Offshore wind farms may also alter local fish distribution and create artificial reefs, impacting biodiversity. Some additional concerns include:  

  • Noise and Electromagnetic Fields: The development of offshore wind farms, particularly during the construction phase, can greatly increase noise levels and in some cases, create small electromagnetic fields. Both can adversely affect fish and marine mammals.  

How much does the wind blow in your future offshore wind project?

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There is absolute consensus within the wind industry, that wind resource is a key input parameter for the initial evaluation of any seabed area for the potential development of an offshore wind project – there is no doubt of its importance, in fact, if we look at the physics behind what matters to extract Power from wind speed, we know that averaged wind resource on site counts to the power of 3! 

In other words, having a site with 1 m/s more in average wind speed could lead to turbines extracting double the amount of power. Therefore, it is crucial to have wind resource data under control for any offshore wind project development.

The range of data quality, hence the uncertainty, varies tremendously depending on the stage of your project. You can find low resolution wind data sources and upgrade them to well postprocessed acquired measurements, depending on the phase of your project when you are performing bankability yield assessments. 

In this article we, will dive into the project origination phases and therefore we want to describe the most popular wind resource data available. 

Youwind new tools and features, April 2024

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In this article, we give an overview of the latest additions to the Youwind web-based solution:

  • Existing neighbouring wind farms added to area screening and  park layout design
  • Adaption of Air Density and multiple power curves
  • Internal and external wake loss efficiency split in scenario overview
  • Easy built-out of neighbouring wind farm scenarios
  • Updates of areascreening that show mouse coordinates and duplicate button

As always, you can write to info@youwindrenewables.com to get further information or help from our offshore wind experts.

Existing neighbouring wind farms

Under Area screening and My Layers then all the existing neighbouring wind farms, the number of positions and turbine types have been added.

This is displayed as a turbine map showing all existing turbines worldwide but also the ones Youwind users have created for their scenarios.

By seamlessly adding the neighboring wind farms from the global project directly to your scenario in Park Layout Design they are automatically included to calculate the existing wake effect with the chosen wake loss model.

Cables ‘overlooked’ in early offshore wind cost projections

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  • Cable failures and electrical losses can have a significant impact on long-term profitability – but cables are often neglected by developers, who traditionally optimise their wind farm layouts based on high CAPEX components like turbines and foundations.
  • Youwind launches unique cable visualisation functionality, helping developers quickly simulate the impact of cable failures and losses on future maintenance budgets and build crucial redundancy into their wind farm layouts.

Barcelona, 20th February 2024 — Faced with an ongoing trend of financial challenges linked to the installation and operation of subsea cables, offshore wind developers must start optimising their cable layouts at the earliest possible opportunity during the screening and development phases. This is the perspective of Youwind Renewables, a unique web-based solution for accelerating offshore wind development.

Youwind has today, therefore, unveiled new cable visualisation functionality within its Pixel Park layout generation and micrositing tool. This will enable developers to quickly generate optimised inter-array and export cable layouts, simulate the impact of losses on future maintenance budgets, and build redundancy into wind farm designs.

Inter-array and export cables are widely acknowledged to be the most prominent point of failure for offshore wind farms in construction and operation – often contributing to significant unforeseen repair and replacement costs, alongside considerable loss of revenue when the ability of the wind farm to export power is affected.

Youwind’s data show that, for European wind farms, the failure probability is 0.0007 per kilometer of cable per year (Source: TenneT) – a figure that may seem small at face value but represents a significant threat to the profitability of any project without suitable redundancy measures in place.