Increased Market Value of Wind Energy
Precision Wind, LLC of Las Cruces, New Mexico unveiled its Wind Resource Management Suite™ at the WINDPOWER 2008 Conference and Exhibition, North America’s largest wind energy event organized by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA).
Presenting before a record-breaking crowd of WINDPOWER attendees, Dr. James Stalker, CTO of Precision Wind, participated on a panel discussion on new modeling techniques for wind assessment, forecasting and resource management. Dr. Stalker, a leading atmospheric scientist, presented an atmospheric modeling solution which makes great strides in mitigating the inherent challenges of managing an intermittent power source.
Taking questions from load managers, wind farm operators, and developers the panel was challenged by attendees to quantify the benefits of complex wind forecasts over free, “traditional” wind forecasts. Dr. Stalker provided compelling practical examples of cases in which simple forecasts fail, and illuminated the real consequences of such failures in terms of financials and power supply challenges for the wind industry.
- A 15% reduction in the average forecast error can equate to $1.4 million in increased revenue for a 100 MW wind project.
- A 2-4% increase in banker confidence factors for long term assessments (P-factors) can ensure access to funding and decrease cost of capital by 1-2%.
“Wind has become big business. As bottom-line-minded businesses, our clients rely on Precision Wind to deliver accurate wind resource assessments and power forecasts in order to realize a competitive advantage whether they are developers, operators or grid managers,” explains Dr. Stalker. “Our wind forecast models are the most sophisticated in the market to date, and we are constantly refining our methods to achieve greater accuracy. We align our products and services to serve the specific needs of our clients. In the end, it’s the power forecast/assessment that is most crucial to the return of business value for developers and operators, and to ensure reliability for grid operators.”
Precision Wind’s Wind Resource Management Suite™ moves wind energy measurably forward toward meeting the integration goal of being a clean source of power that is as predictable and reliable as conventional supplies. Precision Wind’s assessment tools, Precise Find™, Precise Profile™, and Precise Plan™ provide:
– Site selection in less than a month at a tenth of the cost of anemometers
– Analysis of a larger area over a longer period of time than conventional methods
– Significantly more accurate site assessment
– Lower cost of capital from increased banker confidence
Precision Wind’s forecasting and management tools, Precise Stream™, provide:
– Precision forecast capability from <1 hr to 48 hrs
– 6 hour forecasts within 2.5%
– Increased revenue through greater forecast accuracy
– Improved system reliability
To learn more about Precision Wind visit www.precisionwind.com.
WINDPOWER 2008 was held in Houston, TX from June 1 to 4. Attendance at the conference nearly doubled from 2007, with 776 exhibitors and over 13,000 attendees.
About Precision Wind
Precision Wind is the global leader in atmospheric modeling to produce accurate long term wind resource assessments and near-term forecasts. Leveraging proprietary supercomputing clusters, the industry-first Wind Resource Management Suite™ improves the accuracy of current assessment practices and moves the time required for decisions from years down to weeks. It also evolves energy forecasting from current assumptions to real-time data used for power scheduling, spot market sales, or maintenance and operation planning.
