Should wind resource assessments in the Gulf of Mexico be done with floating or scanning lidar?

Presentation Description: With the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management set to start leasing areas in the Gulf of Mexico for offshore wind farm development by 2025, wind resource assessments will soon be being carried out in the region. Offshore, several different lidar technologies have largely replaced the use of met masts due to their lower cost and reduced ecological impact. The most common solutions are floating lidar systems (FLS) but long-range dual scanning lidars (DSL) have also attracted attention due to their ability to measure the offshore resource whilst being installed onshore. DSL measurements generally have lower uncertainties than their floating counterparts but are constrained by a maximum measurement range of roughly 10km. The Gulf of Mexico is home to many offshore platforms built for the oil and gas industry and siting scanning lidars on these platforms can extend their area of applicability far beyond 10km from the coast. Using a previously validated model of DSL measurement error and a public database of offshore platforms, this work presents a map of where DSL measurements are feasible for wind farm developments in the Gulf of Mexico and quantifies the measurement uncertainty at these locations. This is compared to floating lidar measurement uncertainty to show a map of which technology is best to use and where. This will provide a resource to wind farm developers to help them decide which measurement equipment to use and facilitate future wind farm development in the Gulf.