PONE-D-24-31465Power production and area usage of offshore wind and the relationship with available energy in the atmospherePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Nøst,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please address the reviewers' comments carefully and submit the revised paper and response letter according to the requirements, as given below. 

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Mohamad Abou Houran

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors have done an excellent job; however, here are my comments:

1) In Table 1, in the Dudgeon row under the Area column, there is an extra "N".

2) Please clarify which unit of measurement "WM^-2" refers to in Figure 2.

3) The conclusions repeat the same idea regarding the C/A ratio; please improve the conclusions.

4) I believe the paper should include a discussion section. Since this is a methodological proposal, it should have an extensive discussion. Please add this section.

Reviewer #2: The paper is well-written, and it seems of value for wind energy community both scientific and

industry. Please see comments below:

Small edits:

1. Line 22 p1/14: within 2050 → by 2050

2. future area “needs” for offshore wind. → “needed” for offshore wind.

3. Please give a simple and short definitions to capacity density, capacity factor for readers

outside of the field.

4. Table 1 caption mentions that the table has the coordinates and locations of the farms but

there is no such information on the table. This table can also be moved to supplementary

materials. You should also define cf202X meaning in the caption such as “Capacity

Factor for 202X (cf202X)”.

5. Please discuss the details of what is in figure 2 in caption. Figure 2 has parts a, and b.

You should have a brief explanation for these in the caption.

6. In equation 9, what is ndl?

7. You don’t explain what the mixing arrows are in the figure 4.

Please see comments below:

1. “However, since W depends on an average along the circumference of the wind farm and

Z on an average over the wind farm area, it is unlikely that they will vary significantly

with area.” → does this mean that you are ignoring the role of atmospheric stability in

your calculations?

2. Can you provide steps to how you rearranged 15 to 16?

3. “If the installed capacity is zero (no wind farm), Eq 15 still applies, but the input of

energy will be balanced by dissipation only. When increasing the installed capacity, the

power production will increase until it reaches a limit, given by the input of energy.” →

please clarify this by determining why these sentences are true. For instance, “when

increasing the installed capacity, the power production increase, [add what would change

in Eq 15], and therefore it reaches a limit.

4. Line 229, page 8: “assuming that all wind farms are shaped as squares”, this is a big

assumption as in reality the wind farms are hardly shaped as a perfect square. What

uncertainties do you think this assumption adds to your calculations? Please add a few

sentences discussing this.

5. In page 8, when you remove wind farms with smaller capacity (<200MW) you get better

correlation. Please consider explaining a reason for this. And specify how many of the

wind farms are getting removed by removing the small farms (what percent of the wind

farms are removed)?

6. In Discussion, you mention “Wind farms with a total capacity below 200 MW (shown in

gray in Fig 5 b and c) probably operate with a lower efficiency and therefore the

assumption of constant WP and ZP is not valid for these wind farms.” → How did you

decide on threshold of 200MW as for farms that do not perform with high efficiency?

7. Table 2, are you using ZP = 0.3 divided by 0.8? If so, why is that? On page 9 you

mentioned that it could vary between these two numbers as upper and lower limits.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: CommentToAuthors.pdf

PONE-D-24-31465R1Power production and area usage of offshore wind and the relationship with available energy in the atmospherePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Nøst,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 10 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Mohamad Abou Houran

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments"

Dear authors,

Please address the reviewer's comments carefully and improve the paper.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: Partly

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors followed all the suggestions requested so, my recommendation is to accept the manuscript.

Reviewer #3: The paper should make some improvements:

1. The innovation is not clear in the beginning. The reason to publish it is that the added value of this work for the global S&T audience (introduction) needs more definition in the introduction.

2. The sustainable siting parameter beyond the wind potential should be included in the state-of the art (environment, regulations, other uses, etc). Several very recently published scientific works are available.

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #3: No

**********

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Power production and area usage of offshore wind and the relationship with available energy in the atmosphere

PONE-D-24-31465R2

Dear Dr. Ole,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Mohamad Abou Houran

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

The authors have addressed the reviewer's comments. The work can be published. 

Reviewers' comments: