Oslo-listed seismic data specialist TGS has announced a new campaign for offshore wind and metocean measurement located in Morro Bay, off the US West Coast. The campaign seeks to enhance the understanding of offshore conditions across three wind energy lease areas in Morro Bay. This three-year deployment in an area with an average depth of 1,000 meters will be the first by TGS on the West Coast of the United States and will add to its comprehensive library of wind and metocean data collected on the East Coast of the US, Norway, and Germany.
The data gathered will offer insights for environmental impact assessments, turbine selection, layout optimization, foundation design, and operations and maintenance planning for floating wind farms. It will also enable more accurate modelling of capex, opex, potential energy production, and grid requirements. The buoy, equipped with advanced sensors designed to capture detailed measurements of wind, metocean, and environmental data, will be supplied by Eolos. Key metrics include wind speed and direction at turbine hub height, wave heights, ocean current data across the full water column, and monitoring of birds, bats, and fish.
As with all wind and metocean campaigns conducted by TGS, the multi-client approach will allow multiple customers to subscribe to the same floating LiDAR data. Similar initiatives have already been successfully deployed on the East Coast of the United States, in Germany, and offshore Norway, where fleet-wide LiDAR data availability averages 94% across all TGS deployments at a 140-meter measurement height.
This deployment is supported by funding from the offshore wind industry and is expected to be launched in the third quarter of 2024. Earlier this month, Norwegian offshore TGS received all required approvals to complete their previously announced merger with compatriot seismic acquisition specialists PGS.
Source: splash247.com