News

Plant Underperformance Challenges and Solutions Featured in North American Windpower

July 01, 2009

The success and rapid growth of wind development over the last decade has demonstrated that the industry has far surpassed a “going green” trend and is truly a practical, long-term solution to our nation’s energy challenges. Developers are building profitable projects, wind farms are revitalizing local economies with new jobs, and tons of CO2 are eliminated daily. The wind industry is indeed experiencing exponential growth despite a few modest shortfalls. Of those shortfalls includes wind plant underperformance compared to preconstruction estimates, but as Eric White, AWS Truewind’s vice president of consulting services, explains to North American Windpower, these preconstruction estimates are becoming more accurate.

Preconstruction plant performance estimates have consistently been over predicting output levels by 10% (see “Critical Gap in the Knowledge Bank” in January 2009 issue of Windpower Monthly.) This shortfall, or production gap as commonly referred to, can result in myriad challenges including “reduced returns on investments, difficulties in securing project financing and even the cancellation of otherwise viable projects” (North American Windpower). AWS Truewind’s recent article in North American Windpower provides an overview of its recent “backcast” study which compared existing plants’ outputs to current methods for forecasting production. The result revealed that AWS Truewind’s current methods are a much more palatable 2.2% difference from actual plant performance.

“While much improved, there does remain a modest shortfall and, therefore, room for further refinement,” explains White. “Three major areas were identified for further investigation: turbulence intensity, wake losses, and suboptimal operation.” AWS Truewind will continue to research and refine this process to create the most accurate preconstruction plant estimates possible.

For more information on AWS Truewind’s bankable energy production reporting services please contact us.

To read the full text article, “A Better Read on Gauging Fleet Underperformance”, reference the July 2009 issue of North American Windpower.

Adams and White Promoted to VP of Business Development and Consulting Services

June 17, 2009

AWS Truewind is pleased to announce the promotions of James Adams, III to Vice President of Business Development and Eric White to Vice President of Consulting. Mr. Adams will have the primary responsibility of directing business development activities for the company and Mr. White will lead the Consulting Services group. Both promotions are reflective of the company’s commitment to build and maintain a strong and dynamic management team across its unique portfolio of services and products.

“Jim has been a key part of our success over the past several years, and we are confident in his ability to continue growing our company and our client base,” said Bruce Bailey, President of AWS Truewind.

Mr. Adams joined AWS Truewind in 2002 as an Environmental Scientist and quickly rose to supervisory and management positions. Mr. Adams was most recently Director of Project Services and Business Development at AWS Truewind during which time he successfully managed a staff of technical project managers and marketing staff. In his new role Mr. Adams will continue to oversee all business development activities for the company including its international endeavors in high-growth countries such as India.

Mr. White joined AWS Truewind in 2006 as Director of Engineering and successfully grew the department to offer a full spectrum of renewable energy project development services from wind resource assessment campaign design and management to due diligence and performance evaluation. In this role Mr. White also provided guidance and leadership on a number of special projects such as research on offshore resource assessment methods and programs, and transmission and grid integration studies.

“Eric has been instrumental in enhancing our energy assessment, due diligence and performance evaluation methods at AWS Truewind," said Bailey. "His leadership will insure AWS Truewind’s position as an international leader in renewable energy consulting for years to come,” adds Bailey.

openWind's Innovative Capabilities Described in Windtech International

June 09, 2009

As the wind industry grapples with constant developments in the wind farm design software market, Windtech International introduces the newest player amongst the innovations: openWind®. Featured in the June 2009 edition, “openWind: An Open-Source Approach to Wind Farm Design and Optimization” was written by AWS Truewind’s Nick Robinson. The article elaborates on the application’s unique open-source platform which allows for the seamless integration of openWind with GIS constructs:

Over the past two decades, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have become a widely adopted approach to interacting with geographical data. The technology has reached a level of maturity and multidisciplinary application that affords even novice users some level of comfort with GIS constructs…Built from the ground up on GIS data types, the openWind architecture is intended to greatly simplify the design and optimization of constrained sites and allow data to be exchanged easily between the software and user’s GIS databases. (Windtech International).

openWind, released in the autumn of 2008, is freely available for download at the openWind website.

For full text of the article, “openWind: An Open-Source Approach to Wind Farm Design and Optimization,” reference the June 2009 issue of Windtech International. For a truncated version click here.