Prospecting API

Designed for: Engineer/Consultant, Developer & Government Agency

For pricing and purchase details:

Access & Integrate 3TIER's Solar and Wind Data

Primary Uses

Utility-scale prospecting
Utility-scale lead qualification
Small-scale marketing and sales tools
Small-scale customer and public educational tools

3TIER's wind and solar datasets provide in-depth resource data for any location worldwide. Our online maps and data products have become the 'go-to' tools for utility-scale developers needing to quickly vet potential project locations. They have also assisted residential and commercial-scale renewable energy installers and manufactures by helping them educate customers on the value of on-site renewable resources to inform hardware and installation decisions and calculate returns-on-investment.

3TIER's Prospecting API (Application Programming Interface) enables you to integrate our scientifically derived, third party resource data into your own internal applications and customer experiences. You can use the API to build revenue-generating applications and mash-ups including:

Web-based lead generation programs
Internal and customer-facing sales tools
Product selection tools
Project design and financial modeling tools

The Prospecting API accesses 3TIER's global data using simple REST calls. It is an open, standards based, XML programming interface. To make integration simple and quick, 3TIER provides detailed developer documentation, programming examples, and sample code.

Technical Overview

Product Highlights

Solar: Global Dataset. Annual mean GHI, including confidence interval.
Wind: Global Dataset. Annual mean wind speed values at any custom height between 10 m and 140 m. Includes confidence intervals for each value.

Optional Features

In addition to 3TIER's basic API configuration, we can also provide extended information, including:

Monthly mean wind speeds
Annual mean wind Weibull k and A
Annual mean wind rose
Annual wind speed distribution
Annual and monthly mean power density
Annual and monthly mean temperature
Annual and monthly mean air density

Technical Highlights

The Prospecting API is a REST API that provides direct access to 3TIER's datasets.
Solar Dataset
- Spatial resolution of 2 arc minutes (approximately 3 km)
- Based on over a decade of satellite data with continual updates
- Founded on in-house research and the published work of Dr. Richard Perez of SUNY Albany
- Validated and developed using numerous datasets from around the world
Wind Dataset
- Spatial resolution of approximately 5 km
- Mesoscale 10-year WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) model run
- Validated by 4000 NCEP-ADP network stations worldwide
- Model constrained by high-quality inputs from the NCAR/NCEP reanalysis

Documentation

Methodology

3TIER produced the first global solar irradiance map and time-series dataset at roughly three times the resolution of previous US solar datasets and at thirty times the resolution of global datasets available from NASA. Our dataset is based on actual, half-hourly, high-resolution visible satellite imagery observations via the broadband visible wavelength channel at a 2 arc minute resolution and includes over a decade of hourly values of GHI, DNI, and DIF.

3TIER processes the satellite images based on a combination of in-house research and algorithms published in peer-reviewed scientific literature. Our uniform methodology is supported by the global atmospheric science and research community and results in a consistent map and dataset, enabling more accurate point-to-point comparisons. The specific satellites and length of time varies slightly by region due to differences in the availability of data from region to region. See the chart below for more details.

Regions	Satellites	Temporal Coverage
Western Hemisphere	GOES 8 - 13	13 years (January 1997 - May 2010)
South Asia and Middle East	Meteosat 5, Meteosat 7	11 years (January 1999 – February 2010)
East Asia and Oceania	GMS 5, GOES 9, AMTSAT	11 years (December 1999 – March 2010)
Europe and Africa	Meteosat 7, Meteosat 9	11 years (July 1998 – March 2010)