National Renewable Energy Lab commissions global offshore wind database

Source: Special to E&E • Posted: Tuesday, April 29, 2014

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has hired Danish firm K2 Management to build a global installation database for offshore wind.

NREL wants easily accessible data on installation times, correlation effects, implications and processes involved in developing offshore wind so the industry can develop in the United States with best practices, avoiding delays and cost overruns, the Danish consultancy said.”We will use a mix of publicly available data, internal project data and interview K2 Management staff to map real experienced time consumption and pitfalls in the various parts of these projects,” said Carsten Jensen, managing director at K2 in the United States. “The ambition is to get as much validated data as possible in the database, so we can service all the main aspects.”

To date, there are 62 offshore wind farms commissioned globally and 18 in installation, according to K2 Management, which says it was directly involved in more than half of the projects. The first offshore wind farm in the world was installed in Denmark in 1991.