Description of the North Sea wind climate for wind energy applications

In The Netherlands it is foreseen that wind turbines will be installed on offshore locations in the North Sea before the year 2010. Therefore adequate knowledge of the offshore wind climate should be obtained, both for the estimation of energy yields and for the determination of wind load parameters. For this purpose databases of two offshore locations have been analyzed. One is the K13 platform, near the Dutch coast, with a database of 8 years with wind speed measurements at one height, the other is the West Sole platform near the English coast, with a database of only 1 year, but with both wind speed and turbulence intensity measurements at seven heights. It is concluded that at K13 the mean wind speed at 74.9 m height during the period 1982–1989 is 9.0 m/s, and that the Weibull form factor k is 2.04.