Meteorological Tower Placement Report to the Virginia Offshore Wind Development Authority (VOWDA)

The report describes the types of metocean data needed to inform and accelerate offshore wind project development, including recent results from Denmark that suggest how calibrated and traceable ground-based vertical-profiling LIght Detection And Ranging (LIDAR) can reduce uncertainty in estimating annual energy production. It recommends a phased development approach to outfit the Chesapeake Light Tower (CLT) with appropriate instrumentation to begin characterizing Virginia's offshore wind resource at a fraction of the cost of a new met tower in the initial phases of work.