LSU Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Develops Software to Protect Offshore Windfarms

December 18, 2024

BATON ROUGE, LA – In July 2023, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced that it would hold the first-ever offshore wind energy lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico. Since then, renewable energy companies have expressed interest in wind farming, with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management finalizing four Wind Energy Areas that could produce enough clean, renewable energy to power more than 3 million homes. However, with this rapid growth comes challenges, such as protecting these wind farms from hurricanes. 

Thanks to a nearly $500,000 grant from the LSU Institute of Energy Innovation, LSU Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Associate Professor Chao Sun and his team, including LSU Oceanography and Coastal Sciences Assistant Professor Paul Miller and LSU CEE Associate Professor Celalettin Ozdemir, are developing computational software to enable resilient design and optimized planning, operation, and safety management of offshore wind farms facing extreme hurricanes in the Gulf. 

“Hurricane exposure is a major challenge for Wind Energy Areas in the Gulf,” Sun said. “Under climate change conditions, more frequent and severe tropical cyclones are anticipated, posing a major threat to the design, installation, operation, and safety management of offshore wind farms. Currently, extreme site-specific metocean data for the Wind Energy Areas in the Gulf is lacking, and comprehensive software is unavailable.”

Sun’s research aims to develop a synergistic computational software package that includes mesoscale modeling of past strong hurricanes near Wind Energy Areas, estimation of the frequencies and intensities of future hurricanes near the Wind Energy Areas, mesoscale modeling of future hurricanes near the Wind Energy Areas with modified atmospheric conditions to reflect anticipated climate changes, developing a microscale hurricane-boundary layer model to characterize extreme hurricane winds at the Wind Energy Areas, developing a synergistic framework for system-level performance assessment and survival analysis of offshore wind farms during the passage of hurricanes in the Gulf, and engaging outreach stakeholders and end-users in the research. 

“The research outcomes (hurricane-induced extreme wind, wave, current data, offshore wind farm performance analysis software, and extreme wind-wave load models) can be directly used for resilient planning and design of offshore wind farms in the Gulf,” Sun said. “Gulf Wind Technology will participate in the research and use the research products for resilient design, risk analysis, and safety management of offshore wind farms facing major hurricanes.”

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Contact: Libby Haydel
Communications Manager
225-578-4840
ehaydel1@lsu.edu