Three prominent weather forecasting companies took advantage of their podium positions to request laboratory support to help them provide better information to renewable energy projects, namely wind projects. The monthly Sustainable Energy and Atmospheric Sciences seminar series kicked off the new year January 21st at the National Institute of Standards (NIST) in Boulder, CO. Pascal Storck of 3Tier, Bruce Bailey of AWS Truewind, and Mark Ahlstrom of WindLogics spoke about the weather/wind forecasting process in the US and requested help in these areas:
1) Increased number of observation points to improve accuracy.
2) Independent evaluation of low profile observation instruments, such as LIDAR and SODAR, to increase adoption by the industry
3) High quality global and regional forecasts
4) Improved mathematical prediction models
It was the clear consensus that the US Labs are critical to providing the data needed to help wind projects successfully plan and use wind energy AND that the US Labs could do a lot more to help the forecasts being provided to the project operators. Today the European forecasts are often better at predicting weather over the western states than the forecast generated here. To insure the US meets the predicted increase in Wind Capacity from about 20 GW today to more than 300 GW by 2030, better information about the weather is critical.