An Open-Source Procedure to Derive Met-Ocean Conditions for the Simulation of Floating Wind Turbines

The simulation of offshore wind turbines requires the definition of a long-term statistical representation of the environmental conditions in the installation site. To certify a wind turbine for offshore use, a set of design load cases (DLCs) must be simulated. Although international standards [1] define these conditions, finding ready-to-use and complete environmental conditions for such studies can be difficult. 

This work provides a working example of how to derive environmental conditions for offshore wind turbine simulation using only open-source tools. Data is sourced from the ERA5 reanalysis database [2] and processed using Virocon [3]. 

Folder contents

1. "01 Derivation of Met-Ocean Conditions for FOWT simulation.py" - Python script to obtain environmental condtions for an offshore site. Example provided for EU site off of Barra Island (Scotland)
2. "02 ERA5_WoB_2000.py" - Python script example to downlod hourly data samples of wind speed at 10 and 100 above sea water level, significant wave height, peak spectral period and mean wave direction from ERA5 reanalysis database for year 2000
3. "03 MetOcean_WoB_ERA5" - Post-processed ready-to-use environmental conditions for simulation of Offshore (Floating) wind turbines. Data from EU site off of Barra Island (Scotland). 
4. "04 arraydescription_pdfWoB.json", "04 arrayvalues_pdfWoB", "04 README_pdfWoB" - 4-D Array containing probability of each wind speed - significan wave height - peak spectral period  and wind-wave misalignment bin. 

The procedure is explained in detail in [4].