Photo by Michael Courtney

RUNE project shows future of near-shore wind resource estimations

There is a worldwide interest in reducing the costs of offshore wind energy, which can be achieved by cheaper and more accurate estimations of the wind resources before wind farms are installed.

Reports have been released about the RUNE project, which aimed to reduce the uncertainty in near-shore wind resources using long-range lidars and mesoscale modelling. The RUNE experiment took place during four months starting in November 2015, when strong winds and high waves battered the coast of western Denmark. Despite these harsh conditions, the RUNE experimental campaign was a success. Three WindScanner lidar systems were positioned at the coast and were measuring the wind up to 5 km offshore. Four additional vertically profiling lidars were installed and a floating buoy was measuring the wind offshore.

The scanning lidar measurements compared very well with conventional profiling lidars. This means that they can potentially reduce the coast of offshore wind estimations, because offshore measurement campaigns are expensive and hard to perform. This was illustrated by the vigorous storms and waves up to 11 m that damaged the power generators on the floating buoy. The measurements provided an overview of the wind resource near the coast in unprecedented detail and the results will therefore be used in the New European Wind Atlas project (http://www.neweuropeanwindatlas.eu/).

The mesoscale model WRF and WAsP were used to predict the complex coastal flow and were run during the same period as the measurement campaign, and the sensitivity to the physical set-up options of the WRF model were investigated. Offshore, the WRF model agreed well with the WAsP model, but over land, there were larger differences due to microscale effects. The measurement and modelling results are described in the reports below.

Estimating near-shore wind resources. Floors, Rogier Ralph; Hahmann, Andrea N.; Peña, Alfredo; Karagali, Ioanna. DTU Wind Energy, 2016. 49 p. (DTU Wind Energy E; No. 0116).


Report on RUNE’s coastal experiment and first inter-comparisons between measurements systems. Floors, Rogier Ralph; Lea, Guillaume; Pena Diaz, Alfredo; Karagali, Ioanna; Ahsbahs, Tobias Torben. DTU Wind Energy, 2016. 33 p. (DTU Wind Energy E; No. 0115).


Validation of long-range scanning lidars deployed around the Høvsøre Test Station
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Lea, Guillaume; Courtney, Michael. DTU Wind Energy, 2016. 19 p. (DTU Wind Energy E; No. 0114).

Deploying scanning lidars at coastal sites. Courtney, Michael; Simon, Elliot. DTU Wind Energy, 2016. 26 p. (DTU Wind Energy E, Vol. 0110).

The RUNE Experiment—A Database of Remote-Sensing Observations of Near-Shore Winds. Floors, Rogier Ralph; Peña, Alfredo; Lea, Guillaume; Vasiljevic, Nikola; Simon, Elliot; Courtney, Michael. Remote Sensing, Vol. 8, No. 11, 2016.

http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/8/11/884