AXYS Technologies has announced the deployment of their WindSentinel Land Stations on a man-made island at the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay as part of a project headed by WeatherFlow Inc.
The project is funded by the Virginia Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund (CRCF) with the objective, Developing an Anchored Wind Monitoring and Forecasting System for Offshore Wind Energy. The device is deployed on a small island that is part of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel (CBBT) complex for a period of up to a year to validate and improve WeatherFlow’s wind forecasting models. The Virginia Tech Advanced Research Institute (VT-ARI) is providing third-party validation of the WeatherFlow model by comparing model outputs at different forecast time horizons and locations with the Vindicator III LiDAR measurements and conventional anemometer measurements at the CBBT Third Island and the Chesapeake Light Tower (CLT). Also of interest to VT-ARI researchers are the effect of sea-breeze circulation cells on offshore wind patterns and the occurrence of near-surface jet-like features that preliminary WeatherFlow modeling efforts have forecast at the CLT.