METEOROLOGICAL ASPECTS OF OFFSHORE WIND ENERGY - OBSERVATIONS FROM THE VINDEBY WIND FARM

The Vindeby monitoring project has been established to provide informa tion on the world's first offshore wind farm at Vindeby, Denmark. Over the course of the project, different aspects of offshore meteorology which are relevant to offshore wind energy production will be examined in addition to turbine loading and behaviour in offshore conditions. Here, the simplest aspects of coastal meteorology are investigated, na mely, wind speed differences between land and sea, wind speed profiles , diurnal variability and turbine wake effects. Observations are compa red with simple prediction methods in order to test commonly held assu mptions about the differences between the wind climate over land and s ea and also with results from Riso's WA(S)P model.