Project Description

The EO4WIND project (Earth Observation for Best Practices in the Renewable Energy Sector: Wind) is one of four Earth Observation (EO) Best Practice activities proposed by the European Space Agency in 2023. The objective of the EO4WIND project is to establish the current information needs and best practices for the use of Earth Observation based products and services within the onshore and offshore wind sectors. Further analysis will facilitate the identification and consolidation of geoinformation needs and priorities, identification and characterisation of EO based products and services, and finally, the definition of a roadmap for building EO industry guidelines within the wind sector.

EO4WIND is led by TechWorks Marine, a metocean and earth observation data company, based in Dublin (Ireland). As one of Ireland and Europe's leading innovators in the crossover space between metocean and EO products, TechWorks Marine will work to engage a critical mass of key stakeholders over the project's lifetime of 18 months to build agreement on the way earth observation-derived information products can be used in common business processes across the entire wind industry.

EO4WIND will result in the development of a best practices guide for companies to identify suitable sites for new wind farms, to obtain a deeper scientific understanding of the site conditions, and to enable accurate environmental compliance and monitoring activities. Operational services already available to companies in this sector include sea turbidity data from Europe’s Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 satellites, and offshore wind speed analysis from the Sentinel-1 satellite. As a direct result of this project, TechWorks Marine expects that there will be an increase in user awareness of EO products in the wind energy sector.