finalRAVE

Aims of the project

The fundamental goal of all final RAVE partners is to continue the globally unique and valuable data set obtained at alpha ventus and to provide research projects with access to this data. Quality control of the measurement data will be continued and further developed. In-situ sea state data from German measuring stations will continued to be bundled and made available on the BSH sea state portal. To this end, seven additional sea state measuring stations have been set up in German offshore wind farms and data from the sea state stations of state authorities and research institutions has been acquired.

RAVE coordination by Fraunhofer IWES (Institute for Wind Energy Systems) ensures by accompanying the large number of stakeholders and simultaneous projects a highly required degree of coordination. With this a cross-project, cost-effective and coordinated approach is achieved. A particular focus in the current project period starting 2025 is the research-related support of the dismantling of alpha ventus and the research projects taking place in the final phase of this wind farm.
The IWES package and tasks include public relations work on research activities and publicizing the globally unique treasure of  RAVE data stored in the BSH research archive. To this end, news is published via newsletters and on this website.

Every year, the International RAVE Workshop is held as a hybrid event to exchange research results using RAVE data. With its lively discussions among interested experts, it is also considered a source of inspiration for future research topics in offshore wind energy. In addition to other special events on specific topics, the new public RAVE Forum will be offered as a smaller-scale, more frequent online discussion platform during the current project period.

The BSH (Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency) is responsible for the management and quality control of all RAVE data in the BSH research archive and administers free data access for the interested public. The measurements at alpha ventus cover a wide range of parameters relevant to the construction, operation, and environmental impact of the wind farm. Based on many years of measurements, the consortium partner BSH uses sea state models to provide highly specialized data products for design and offshore logistics applications for a wide range of uses.

Research in another subproject is conducted by Ludwig-Franzius-Institute for Hydraulic, Estuarine and Coastal Engineering/ Leibniz University Hannover to develop a machine learning model for sea state evaluations to optimize the logistics of offshore operations. The wind, wave and current data provided is analyzed regarding their correlation and interaction. The measuring sites will be linked to each other to create an area-wide assessment basis in the German Bight for offshore logistic vessel operations and to define design parameters based on the development combinations. The models developed will perspectively be integrated into BSH´s sea state portal and are intended to be made available as a data product for research and industry.