Primary Uses
- Long-term wind variability analysis
- Utility-scale site assessment
- Project funding allocation
- Meteorological mast fleet optimization
- Construction decisions
Portfolio Climate Variability Analysis (or PCVA) gives you the confidence you would have if all of your met towers had been collecting data for over a decade. Using state-of-the-art modeling techniques, PCVA delivers long-term hourly wind data at every site in your portfolio to help identify the most promising projects before waiting for 12 to 18 months of observational data. With monthly data updates, now you can make informed, on-going decisions about capital deployment, equipment choices, and project priorities with scientifically derived data at near real-time.
PCVA balances the in-depth, long-term climatology of our Wind Site CVA with the scalability, responsiveness, and lower cost per site required by large scale wind developers with an extensive network of met towers. 3TIER can deploy PCVA across an entire portfolio of met towers ranging in size from several to several hundred, even if the time duration of observations is different for each tower within your portfolio. With comprehensive data delivered on a monthly basis, PCVA supports robust internal assessment and enables developers to regularly evaluate and re-prioritize their entire portfolio of sites.
Every month PCVA takes the most recent month's observational data for each location, reevaluates climate variability based on a 10+ year NWP (Numerical Weather Prediction) model simulation, and returns the entire modeled record extension for each location within a few days. Where at least one month of observational met tower data is available, 3TIER applies an advanced statistically technique known as MOS to the simulation. This process reduces bias and error and provides the most accurate wind information possible. The result is a long-term, corrected time series of hourly values for every met tower in your portfolio.
Each month, 3TIER will deliver a comma-separated value (CSV) file of hourly values for each met tower covering 10 or more years. If at least one month of observational data is available, a MOS-corrected time series will also be delivered.
3TIER processes publicly available coarse-resolution historic gridded data with a state-of-the-art NWP model to generate accurate, high-resolution time series data across large geographic areas. 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. Unlike traditional models that merely interpolate observed wind speeds between widely dispersed points, 3TIER's system integrates innovative physics-based methods, which simulate the interaction between the atmosphere and the earth's surface, to create a more robust and accurate wind climatology. This technique captures the myriad processes responsible for wind—from jet level dynamics to surface level processes and everything in between.
Where sufficient observational data is available, model data can be further refined to your specific location(s) using 3TIER's proprietary method of applying MOS, which statistically corrects and adjusts the variance of the simulated NWP model output to remove bias. MOS is computed individually for each met tower location using all months of provided observational data. MOS-corrected data better represent both the mean value and the variability of the observed wind resource at each tower location.
In order to put PCVA into operation, 3TIER must receive the meta data, such as coordinates and sensor height, for each met tower and, with the client, establish consistent identifiers for each met tower. In addition, on an ongoing monthly basis the client must provide an observational data file in a CSV format for all met towers where the analysis is requested.
If you are unfamiliar with the technical terminology on this page, please visit our Glossary for more information.
