Developer RWE has leading a first-ever project tackling the so-called ‘global blockage effect’ (GBE) in offshore wind, a poorly-understood phenomenon that causes wind stream decelerations in front of lead-row turbines, eating into energy yield and so undercutting project economics.
The OWA Globe project will work from a measurement campaign later this year in the ‘Kaskasi gap’ – a strip of water in the Heligo wind farm cluster in the German North Sea said to be “a magnifying glass” of GBE – with a view to creating an industry dataset benchmarking its impact on energy production.
