Model study on the influence of offshore wind farms on the dynamics of the southern North Sea
Offshore wind farms (OWF) is one of the most fast developing areas in wind energy industry. The number of OWF and area they occupy expand rapidly worldwide. According to the wind energy agency WAB only Germany planed to setup about 5000 turbines in North and Baltic Seas. Due to new technology OWF can now be constructed in the regions of 40 meters depth. Particularly in the North Sea the OWF are planned in the regions characterized by strong seasonal stratification, strong tidal currents and rather complex ecosystem with high nutrients concentrations and high primary production. Recent observations and model studies suggest the potential influence of single OWF on vertical structure and currents. In turn clusters of wind farms consisting of hundreds of turbines could result in an accumulative effect on the ecosystem behavior overall. In this study we want to investigate potential effects of OWF on the dynamics of the coast zone by applying newly developed coastal version of FESOM model. This is a three-dimensional model based on mixed unstructured-mesh methods and finite-volume discretization. It is based on three-dimensional primitive equations for the momentum, continuity, and density constituents. Vertically the model uses σ-coordinate system. Unstructured grid consists of quads and triangles zoomed in around the pile to best represent relatively small scale processes, and lower resolution around OWF allows to conduct comparatively large regional studies.
AWI Organizations > Biosciences > Coastal Ecology
AWI Organizations > Climate Sciences > Climate Dynamics