To manage wind generation in its real-time and day-ahead markets, the system operator for the New England area of the U.S., ISO New England Inc., has awarded GL Garrad Hassan a two-year contract to provide wind-power forecasting services to all wind in the ISO’s footprint, including generation within the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. GL Garrad Hassan is in the beginning stages of this project for the ISO, with plans to begin first forecast delivery in 2012. Accurate forecasting is the key to the management of generation source that inherently depends on the variability of the weather, requiring advanced short-term prediction of generation to make it approach the manageability of conventional electricity sources.
The company has carried out pre-construction energy assessments on m operational and soon-to-be-operational wind projects across New England.
“New England offers a diversity of topographic features to externally force the wind and is among the most complicated regions of the U.S. in terms of its meteorology,” says Dr. Craig Collier, Regional Practice Manager for North America’s GH Forecaster service. While New England is exposed to powerful winter storm systems advancing out of Southern Canada, the Central U.S., and the Atlantic (so-called “Nor’Easters”), it is also prone to hurricanes and severe weather, as evidenced by 2011’s devastating tornado outbreak affecting Western Massachusetts. The active summer was followed on its heels by an already active winter. This year’s winter is already off to an early start, with a record-breaking snow storm in late October.
For several years, the company has been providing short-term forecasting for a number of wind installations off the coast of Europe. The techniques developed for offshore prediction may lend themselves well for ISO New England. New England has a tremendous offshore wind resource.
The company has provided short-term predictions for project owners, operators, utilities, and system operators for nearly 10 years. The GL Garrad Hassan product, GH Forecaster, is built upon wind resource and wind power simulation, high-resolution numerical weather predictions, and advanced and highly-adaptive machine learning models, to provide the most accurate short-term forecasts in the industry.
GL Garrad Hassan
www.gl-garradhassan.com
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