Offshore developer Fishermen's Energy has completed a significant step in building an offshore wind farm off the coast of New Jersey. A team of engineers recently installed Lockheed Martin's WindTracer LIDAR device on the rooftop of a seaside apartment building in Margate, N.J.
Typically used at major airports to detect wind shear and turbulence for aircraft operations, Lockheed Martin says this is the first application of the WindTracer in support of an offshore wind farm. The WindTracer provides ‘a sizeable hemisphere’ of wind speeds and directions with samples approximately every 100 meters, every few minutes, up to a 20-mile range, the company says.
From its rootop location in Margate, Fishermen's says the device will continuously record wind speed and direction over the ocean at the planned wind farm sites where it has installed a series of meteorological towers.
