Offshore wind forecasting and operations for the offshore wind energy areas in the U.S. Mid Atlantic

The rising U.S. offshore wind sector holds great promise, both environmentally and economically, to unlock vast supplies of clean, domestic, and renewable energy. To harness this valuable resource, Gigawatt (GW)-scale offshore wind projects are already under way at several locations off of the U.S. coastline. This promising future, however, is still clouded with uncertainties on how to optimally manage those ultra-scale offshore wind assets, which would be operating under harsh environmental and operational conditions, in relatively under-explored territories, and at unprecedented scales. I will present some of our progress in formulating tailored forecasting and optimization models aimed at minimizing some of those uncertainties. Our models and analyses are largely tailored and tested using data from the U.S. Mid-Atlantic—where several GW-scale wind projects are currently under development.