Study of the UK offshore wind resource: preliminary results from the first stage of the SUPERGEN Wind 2 project resource assessment

Rapid changes in wind direction can lead to turbine lifetime reduction or even failure. Also, large hub heights for wind turbines are approaching the top of the surface layer so the traditional logarithmic profile may not be wholly appropriate to parameterise variation of wind speed with height. The first steps undertaken as part of the UK EPSRC Supergen Wind II project to improve wind resource assessment and predict the temporal variations in the offshore wind are presented. Data from boundary-layer wind-profiling radar were analysed to extract the diurnal and vertical patterns of the wind speed close to an offshore site for future correlation with offshore mast data.