There is virtually no statistical co-variation between wind conditions at sea in northern Europe (including southern Norway) and wind conditions in northern Norway (north of Ålesund), according to a fresh study.
This is good news for the country’s offshore wind ambitions, since it means that spreading wind farms geographically along the country’s coastline would ensure that at least some of them would be in production when there is a need for power. In essence, such a geographical spreading would make the country’s total offshore wind power production more stable.
The study builds upon 29 years of time-based wind data from all of the 15 areas that the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) previously identified as potentially suitable for offshore wind development. It was carried out by SINTEF, as part of the work of the NorthWind research centre and the Ocean Grid Green Platform project.
The areas are spread all the way from Sørlige Nordsjø II, about halfway between Norway and Denmark, and Sandskallen, off the coast of West Finnmark. The study also looked at wind data for three coastal areas of other North Sea countries: in UK, Danish and German waters.
The study is the subject of an op-ed in Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv, authored by SINTEF’s John Olav Tande, Harald Svendsen and Eirill Bachmann Mehammer, as well as NTNU’s Magnus Korpås.
