Stony Brook University (SBU) is conducting a collaborative study of offshore wind resources with offshore wind developer Deepwater Wind and AWS Truepower, reports The Statesman.
In 2013, the Long Island Power Authority planned new proposals for cleaner resources. As a result, Deepwater ONE project was formulated with a 210 MW offshore wind farm 30 miles off the coast of Montauk.
The information produced from this partnership between Stony Brook, Deepwater Wind and AWS Truepower will help to better understand the area for the project.
This project will adapt innovative Light Detecting and Ranging systems (LiDAR) technology to harness and convert the winds into electricity in addition to transmitting it to Long Island through an under ocean cable.
Deepwater Wind will assist Stony Brook with resources and funding and coastal wind research in exchange for collaboration on the study.
A lot of people don’t recognize that the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences has a really strong meteorological program, and Brian Colle, who’s the principal investigator, for the project has some ongoing work related to offshore wind resources, said, Clinton L. Plummer, vice president of development, Deepwater Wind.
Currently, LiDAR technology is being used to detect wind speed and direction to develop better knowledge of wind currents. One LiDAR unit has already been implemented at the Stony Brook Southampton campus.
The increased height of LiDAR offers an enhanced range of data collection. Implementation of new technology like LiDAR to collect the data is an innovative approach in industry. Discovering how wind conditions vary with height is relatively a new data that will provide new knowledge.
At present, Deepwater Wind is working on the first U.S. offshore wind farm in Block Island, R.I. This 30 MW farm will generate over 125,000 megawatt-hours annually, which is enough to power over 17,000 homes. The Block Island project is expected to be fully operational by 2016.
This project is given priority among other offshore wind energy projects in the United States, and it can offer many solutions to problems on Long Island.
It is expected that by 2030, there will be 43,000 people working in the offshore wind industry on the U.S. East Coast.
Sabeena Wahid
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