A high-powered group of US developers, financiers, consultancies and contractors has brought in Norwegian data intelligence outfit TGS to carry out a “subscription-based” offshore wind site assessment, with an eye on longer-horizon development off the Atlantic seaboard, where the
Biden administration aims to build 30GW of plant by the end of the decade.
The two-year survey, which will range over nearly half a million acres in the
New York Bight, will use autonomous floating Lidar (light detection and ranging) systems from Spain’s Eolos to gather wind speed measurements and metocean and environmental data, such as significant wave heights, ocean current profile, as well as acoustic monitoring of sea and bird life.
Katja Akentieva, TGS vice president of new energy solutions, told Recharge the “multi-client” assignment – which she would not detail by company name – was for a “diverse range of market players and stakeholders, not just the parties that are looking to develop wind farms but parties that are looking to understand the big picture and want to look for new areas to develop”.
Kristian Johansen, CEO at TGS, which has a long track-record of survey work in the Gulf of Mexico oil & gas sector and international regions, said: “Our ambition is to generate actionable insights and create pathways for the most efficient and highly accurate assessments of new offshore wind lease rounds.”
TGS said what it claimed was the “world's first subscription-based site assessment” aimed to enlarge coverage and data capture in existing lease areas in the
New York Bight – where a record-setting $4.37bn offshore wind auction round was held earlier this year, while providing data insights into newly considered acreage in the area.
“What we heard is we need more data, we need high quality data, we need access sooner and in the right place, and we also want it to be cheaper,” said Akentieva.
Akentieva said TGS wanted “revolutionise the way the wind industry accesses offshore measurement data”.
“Our vision is not to just provide the added value to existing asset holders it's really enhance that regional knowledge for other stakeholders to assess new areas as well as compare them potentially to existing lease areas,” she said.
Demand for offshore wind resource assessment has grown significantly since the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the federal regulator of energy development on the US outer continental shelf, announced it would hold leasing auctions off
Oregon, in the
Central Atlantic, and in the Gulf of Maine, following tenders
off California later this year, in line with plans to have 12.5GW of plant online by 2025, 30GW by 2030 and 110GW by 2050.
