Meteorological Mast Mounted on an Offshore Oil Platform for Wind Measurement: a CFD Analysis
Ezequiel Costa Malateaux da Silva1; Rodrigo Dias1; Leonardo de Lima Oliveira2; Luciano André Cruz Bezerra2
1 Petrobras Research Center (CENPES) - Gas, Power and Gas to Chemicals R&D Department; 2 CTGAS-ER - Centro de Tecnologias do Gás e Energias Renováveis
doi:10.20906/CPS/COB-2015-1838
Resumo
In the last years, Brazil experienced an increase on power generation based on wind turbines. The gradual occupation of Brazilian high wind potential areas shows that, in the future, offshore wind turbines will probably be used in Brazil. Meteorological masts can be mounted on offshore platforms to acquire environmental data to evaluate the wind potential of specific sites, a strategy adopted by Petrobras, which installed the first offshore meteorological mast in Brazil. However, it is important to guarantee that the platform does not disturb the wind flow, which would result in false measured values for the wind speed. In the present work, a CFD simulation was performed to verify the impact of the platform on the wind flow. The results of the simulations were used to compare the values of the wind speed at the position of the meteorological mast with those of the non-disturbed flow, showing that the influence of the platform on the flow is very small for heights greater than 50 m.
Palavras-chave: offshore wind energy; meteorological mast; computational fluid dynamics; offshore wind measurement