Dutch offshore services company Fugro has won a contract with Denmark's Energinet to provide floating wind lidar measurements for what will be the world’s first offshore artificial energy islands, which is being built for the Danish Government.
The energy island will serve as an offshore wind hub gathering and distributing green electricity from wind turbines surrounding the island directly to consumers in countries surrounding the North Sea.
Fugro will install and operate four SEAWATCH wind lidar buoys at two locations, Energioe Nordsoen and Energioe Baltic.
From October, these buoys will record continuous wind measurements for a minimum of 1 year to support wind-resource mapping for the two islands, and the engineering and design of the future wind farms. Fugro is already performing geophysical surveys for the Energy Island project under a separate contract to provide Energinet with a reliable derisked site interpretation.
The SEAWATCH wind lidar can record wind measurements up to 250 m above sea level, and wave measurements and current profiles down to the seabed. The buoy also acts as a multipurpose platform for additional metocean sensors and, on this project, will be fitted with sensors to capture Geo-data on environmental impact parameters, including bat monitoring.
Jens Larsen, Senior Project Manager at Energinet, said: “We are looking forward to the cooperation with Fugro to collect the important quality data for the design of our offshore wind farm infrastructures.”
Jørn Erik Norangshol, Fugro’s Service Line Director, said: “Energy Islands is a landmark project, on which it is crucial for Energinet to understand the natural forces affecting the development. The SEAWATCH wind lidar buoys will provide the best possible wind data to support future investigation and analysis.”