Primary Uses
- Turbine placement
- Project feasibility
- Due diligence and project financing
- Project construction planning
Using proven, state-of-the-art technologies, 3TIER can provide high-resolution information and advanced analysis of the long-term spatial and temporal characteristics of wind resources and power output across any land area worldwide. 3TIER uses the latest mesoscale NWP (Numerical Weather Prediction) models and a proprietary methodology to give you a long-term perspective on resource variability for periods of up to 40 years and at horizontal resolutions as fine as 90 meters.
To increase your level of certainty in the potential capacity of a site, it is critical to understand how your wind resource performs. A valuable wind resource not only means strong winds when the electricity demand or the electricity price is highest, but also a wind resource that generates energy at expected levels over the long-term.
3TIER's Project Resource Assessment report provides a wealth of information on both long-term wind behavior and power capacity, including easily interpreted tables, graphs, plots, and wind roses. Our reports allow you to understand the annual, monthly, and hourly variation of wind speed and energy output at your specific location. In addition, time-series data files covering the full period of the analysis are included to facilitate further evaluation.
When on-site observational wind measurements are available, 3TIER can use these observations to significantly reduce RMSE (Root Mean Square Error) and model bias via a process called Model Output Statistics (MOS). An accompanying validation analysis illustrates the enhanced results by comparing the NWP time-series and the MOS-corrected time-series against the provided observational data.
| FullView Wind Site CVA | FullView 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 | X | X |
| Length of climatology options: 10, 25, and 40 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 | |
| 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 |
Figure 1.
Figure 2.
Figure 3.
Portable Document File (PDF) report and data files in an easily integrated, comma-separated value (CSV) format.
FullView Wind Project Resource Assessment reports are based on the latest science and involve running a mesoscale NWP model for a specific 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 using a microscale diagnostic model.
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.
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