One of the UK’s biggest renewable energy companies is using Second Wind’s Triton Sonic Wind Profiler to evaluate wind farm sites and position wind turbines for maximum productivity and profitability.
RWE npower renewables operates 23 wind farms and 18 hydroelectric plants in the UK. Its parent company, RWE Innogy, is one of Europe’s leading energy companies, supplying electricity to 16 million customers. RWE npower renewables uses two Triton units to profile wind speed, direction, shear, and other variables at existing and prospective wind power sites. Using the Tritons, RWE npower renewables can more confidently forecast annual energy production (AEP) by measuring wind at the heights covering the full rotor sweep of a commercial turbine, which yields the most accurate portrait of wind resources on a particular site.
“We’re using Triton because we’re confident that the new generation of remote sensing technology will reduce the uncertainty in our wind resource assessment,” says Annabel Gammidge, Regional Analytical and Monitoring Strategy Manager at RWE npower renewables. “Used in conjunction with tower-mounted sensors, we expect that the Triton data will allow us to obtain better project financing terms.”
Triton is a remote sensing system that uses sodar (sound detection and ranging) technology to measure wind at greater heights than the previous tower-based standard. Triton’s compact form, ease of deployment, low power requirements and high reliability give wind power companies the versatility to streamline the wind farm development process.
“Beyond the project financing applications, we see the portability of the Triton system as an advantage. We can move Tritons around our site to obtain a stronger characterization of the wind all over the site, rather than being stuck with the data from one hard-to-relocate tower,” Gammidge says.
Before deploying its first Triton on a wind measurement campaign, RWE npower renewables tested the unit against data collected from a 60-meter met tower in northern England. The Triton and met tower data correlated extremely well with a correlation coefficient of 0.986. There was a differential in average wind speed at 60 meters of less than .9%, and the Triton system demonstrated a reliability of 99.8%. The Triton performed as well as promised so RWE npower renewables was able to move it to a wind farm development site in Wales that was under evaluation.
Second Wind www.secondwind.com