Wind Project Resource Assessment

Designed for: Developer & Financier

For pricing and purchase details:

Advanced Wind Assessment Analysis

Primary Uses

Turbine placement
Project feasibility
Due diligence and project financing
Project construction planning

A valuable wind resource not only means strong winds when electricity demand or price is highest, but also a resource that performs at expected levels over the life of the project. Wind Project Resource Assessment increases your confidence in the production potential of your wind project and proposed turbine layout and puts available site observations into long-term, historical context.

HIGH-RESOLUTION, LONG-TERM ANALYSIS

Using proven, state-of-the-art techniques, 3TIER delivers high-resolution information and advanced analysis of both the wind resource and expected power output across any project site worldwide. 3TIER uses the latest mesoscale NWP (Numerical Weather Prediction) models and a proprietary methodology to give you a long-term perspective on variability for periods of up to 50 years and at horizontal resolutions down to a few meters. Our reports include a spatial map of your specific location and turbine layout and provide an in-depth turbine-by-turbine analysis of the annual, monthly, and hourly variation in wind speed and energy output at your site. Time series data files covering the full period of the analysis are also provided to facilitate further analysis.

SECURE FINANCING WITH ENHANCED ACCURACY

This report provides the depth of information necessary to perform detailed site design and long-term financial modeling as well as seek critical project funding. In addition to a detailed wind and power variability study, we also include a probability table with the uncertainty analysis typically required by financing institutions. When on-site observations are available, 3TIER can also dramatically reduce error and model bias by integrating observations using an advanced statistical technique known as MOS (Model Output Statistics). This process provides the most accurate estimates of wind speed and power possible. To demonstrate this, an accompanying validation shows the improved results by comparing the model derived time series and the MOS-corrected time series with the provided period of observations.

Technical Overview

Product Features

	Wind Site CVA	Wind Project Resource Assessment
General Characteristics
Data covers a point-specific site	X	X
Data covers an entire project area		X
Data provided at any custom height between 10 – 200 m	X	X
Resolution options from 4.5 km down to 90 m (or finer)	X	X
Length of climatology options: 10 - 50 years	X	X
Available globally	X	X
MOS-correction	Optional	Optional
Data Delivered
Histogram of hourly distribution of simulated wind speed and power capacity	X	X
Annual and monthly mean wind and power roses	X	X
Annual mean diurnal cycle of wind speed and power	X	X
12x24 tabular formatted data of wind speed values	X	X
CSV file of continuous time series for hourly wind speed, wind direction, temperature, and pressure	X	X
CSV files of long-term mean wind speed and power capacity for all grid points		X
Exceedance probability table		X
Turbine-by-turbine long-term wind speed and power		X
Map of long-term mean wind speed and power over domain		X
CSV files of continuous time series of the aggregate project-wide wind speeds and power capacities		X
Validation of the NWP and MOS-corrected results in comparison to the provided wind observations, including histograms with Weibull parameters	Optional	Optional

Box and whisker plot of monthly-mean wind speed and power capacity

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Time-series plot of annual-mean wind speed and power capacity

Figure 3.

Delivery Method

The analysis is delivered as a Portable Document File (PDF) report with data files in an easily integrated, comma-separated value (CSV) format.

Methodology

Wind Project Resource Assessment reports are based on the latest science and involve running a mesoscale NWP model across a specific project site. 3TIER primarily employs an NWP model called WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting). This model is widely supported and continually enhanced by the global atmospheric science and research community.

For resource assessment purposes, the WRF model is run at your selected area to simulate the historic meteorological conditions for a customized period of time, typically 10, 25, or 40 years. WRF can be run at horizontal resolutions from 4.5 km down to 500 meters. 3TIER can also downscale the data to a horizontal resolution of 90 meters or finer using a microscale diagnostic model called TVM.

Customer Requirements

In order to perform the analysis, the client must select the resolution and length of the climatology as well as provide coordinates of the selected area, met tower location, turbine make, hub height, and power curve. If MOS-correction is to be performed, 3TIER must receive wind measurements from the client.

If you are unfamiliar with the technical terminology on this page, please visit our Glossary for more information.

Case Study

Woodlawn Wind Farm Developed Using 3TIER Wind Resource Assessment

To assist in securing project finance for its latest development, Woodlawn Wind Farm, Infigen Energy commissioned 3TIER to perform a long-term wind resource assessment at the proposed wind farm site.

3TIER's wind resource assessment was provided to an engineering consultant engaged to perform the net energy calculations. The consultant compared 3TIER's mesoscale model derived wind resource data against a MCP approach using nearby observations and concluded that for this project greater certainty in net energy estimation could be attained using 3TIER's data as the long-term reference dataset than the extrapolation of on-site meteorological data to an off-site reference station. Final reports were provided to debt financiers and in December 2010 Infigen Energy (ASX: IFN) announced that it had signed an AU $50-55 million conditional project finance debt facility agreement for their new Woodlawn Wind Farm.

Infigen Energy is Australia's leading specialist renewable energy business, with interests in 36 wind farms across Australia, the United States, and Germany. Infigen Energy has a total installed capacity in excess of 1,700 MW (on an equity interest basis), and currently generates over 4,200 GWh of renewable energy per year.

The 48.3 MW Woodlawn Wind Farm comprises 23 Suzlon S88 2.1 MW turbines and is located near Bungendore in New South Wales, adjacent to Infigen Energy's 140.7 MW Capital Wind Farm. Construction of the Woodlawn Wind Farm has commenced and is scheduled to be completed in the second half of 2011.

3TIER is pleased to be associated with this successful wind farm project.