Offshore wind resources at the North Sea : Lichteiland Goeree, 2014–2025

The Netherlands has set clear ambitions to accelerate the energy transition. By 2050 all energy used in the country shall come from sustainable sources and offshore wind energy plays a vital role in the transition to a carbon-free energy supply. The government has defined a roadmap for the Dutch offshore wind portfolio aiming to expand to 23 GW by 2033. By the end of 2023 an installed capacity of 4.7 GW was already achieved, surpassing the original goal of 4.5 GW. Several wind farms with a combined capacity of 5.5 GW are currently under construction in the wind farm sites Hollandse Kust West and IJmuiden Ver. TNO has been performing offshore wind measurement campaigns at strategic locations in the North Sea since 2011 with the installation and data management of both a 100 m tall meteorological mast and a co-located lidar situated 75 km west of IJmuiden. From 2014 onwards, TNO has further organised wind measurement campaigns with lidars on offshore platforms for the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate. These campaigns are part of the Wind op Zee project that is meant to support the implementation of the Dutch offshore wind roadmap. They consist of four long-standing locations: Lichteiland Goeree (LEG), Europlatform
(EPL), K13-A and L2-FA-1. Recently TNO commissioned a lidar measurement on a fifth platform F2-A-Hanze, where measurements started in February 2026. TNO is accredited for performing the aforementioned meteorological measurements in accordance with IEC 61400-50-2. This report refers to the measurement campaign at the LEG platform where various Vaisala WindCube lidars have been deployed, providing high quality data since 2014. Before 2024 we were using a single WindCube V2 lidar, but since 2024 a pair of WindCube V2.1 lidars is installed. The data are publicly available to be used for further purposes (offshorewindmeasurements.tno.nl). At the LEG platform, the wind analysis for the 2014–2025 period shows that the wind profiles are dominated by the regional climate, mainly caused by the positive phase effect of North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The prevailing wind direction is from the south-west with a mean direction ranging from 234.5º to 245.7º across the different sensor heights (62 m to 290 m). The average wind speed ranges from 9.01 m/s at the lowest measurement height of 62 m up to 10.39 m/s at 290 m. The Weibull distribution, indicating the variability of the wind regime throughout the measurement period, shows a wind speed distribution with typical offshore scale (k) and shape (c) parameters (k=2.13 and c=11.02m/s at 140 m height).