ABPmer’s specialist metocean team is supporting SSE Renewables in the development of Phase 2 of its Arklow Bank Wind Park project, off the east coast of Ireland.
SSE Renewables requires detailed metocean information to support the design, installation and decommissioning phases of the development. ABPmer has been commissioned to prepare a preliminary Site Condition Report and manage the associated metocean survey which will then be used in conjunction with new numerical modelling to refine the preliminary results and inform a final Site Condition Report.
David Lambkin, ABPmer Project Manager, said: “We are delighted to be preparing the Site Condition Reports. We regularly undertake metocean and morphological analysis for offshore windfarms but the mixture of relatively shallow water, stronger tidal currents and exposed wave climate make this a particularly interesting location to study.
“Our validated hindcast databases – Seastates – are the starting point for any metocean studies or parameters we provide and have been used to inform the preliminary report. As we move forward, this will be supplemented and validated with new data from a metocean survey and new high-resolution, site specific numerical modelling.”
The Site Condition Reports provide SSE Renewables with a wide range of metocean statistics, as well as a description of the seabed morphology, sediment transport patterns and a high-level assessment of scour potential. This will provide a broad and robust basis for engineering design and operational planning, which will be further refined and validated from the early planning stages through to final design.
