Partnership enhances "bankability" of wind resource assessments

CONTACT: Robert Gara

(206) 239-0111
rgara@apcoworldwide.com

SEATTLE (May 20, 2010) - 3TIER® today announced that WindPRO, the world's premiere wind farm planning and design software, will integrate with 3TIER's renewable energy information platform to deliver access to global wind reference time-series data, seamlessly within the interface. 3TIER's industry-leading dataset, which independent validation has shown to significantly reduce wind resource assessment uncertainty, will enable wind project planners to perform more "bankable" wind resource assessments and increase their chances of securing project financing.

"Integrating 3TIER wind resource data into WindPRO is an important advancement for wind project analysts all over the world," said Ed Mahlum, senior vice president of product development at 3TIER, a global leader in renewable energy information services. "Analysts now have easy access to the most consistent, scientifically-advanced wind dataset to improve analysis of the long-term energy potential of a site and produce more ‘bankable' results."

3TIER's data integrates the advantages of numerical weather prediction (NWP) modeling into both WindPRO, and the industry-standard process of Measure-Correlate-Predict (MCP). The MCP process is used by analysts to project the long-term energy potential of a proposed location by correlating short-term observational data from the site, with long-term data from a nearby reference site.

"Directly through WindPRO, users will have immediate access to long-term reference data at the exact site location, at a precise hub height, anywhere in the world," said Mahlum. "The benefits are significant. Validation has shown that using 3TIER's Wind Reference Time-Series in MCP analysis substantially reduces uncertainty compared to other reference data sources."

EMD International A/S, developer and distributor of WindPRO, conducted its own validation studies of 3TIER's Reference Wind Time-Series prior to deciding to integrate the data offering into its software. The studies were performed in different regions of the world where EMD had access to reliable, long-term wind measurements from tall towers.

"Our preliminary findings show that 3TIER's wind data significantly reduce the long-term correction error compared to data from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), which is often the only option available due to the lack of reliable long-term ground measurements," said Per Nielsen, manager and senior wind consultant of EMD International A/S. "The addition of 3TIER's data lowers the uncertainty of the annual energy production (AEP) calculation and provides a more bankable result."

In addition to giving wind resource assessment analysts a higher level of certainty, having the data immediately accessible within WindPRO makes MCP analysis faster, easier and more cost-effective. The integration is made possible by 3TIER's unique renewable energy information services platform, which includes an application-programming interface (API) that enables WindPRO users to call up wind data for any location in the world, directly from 3TIER's servers, with the click of a mouse.

The integrated data offering will be made available in WindPRO's version 2.7 service release, which will be available May 24. 3TIER's Reference Wind Time-Series can also be imported into other commonly used wind farm design software packages, and can be purchased directly from 3TIER.

3TIER's Wind Reference Time-Series provides 30+ years of 15 km resolution wind resource data, including hour-by-hour values for:

- Wind speed and direction at a custom height
- Temperature at 2 m
- Air pressure at 0 m

3TIER also performed its own extensive validation of the reference time-series in an analysis of data from more than 450 US tall towers. That validation showed a 25 percent improvement in correlations compared to the nearest NCAR/NCEP reanalysis data point, and a 10 percent improvement in correlations compared to the nearest 10 m observation station. Improvements were even more dramatic in areas of complex terrain. 3TIER's hourly, 15 km resolution time-series data is available globally. By comparison, time-series data from NCAR only provide information in 6-hour increments and at a course resolution of 200 km.

For more information, please visit www.3tier.com.

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ABOUT 3TIER

Founded in 1999, Seattle-based 3TIER is one of the largest independent providers of wind, solar and hydro energy assessment and power forecasting worldwide. People around the world turn to 3TIER when they want the best scientific information to make decisions about renewable energy projects — from the prospecting stage to operations. For more information, visit www.3tier.com.