The graph illustrates the shif of the P-99 from 31.4% without hub height data to 32.4% when this project has hub height data.
There is increasing pressure from wind project financiers to reduce the uncertainty in wind-resource data. One company says it hears more often that developers are gathering wind data at elevations closer to a turbine’s hub height, to get projects financed.
The uncertainty come in data extrapolated up from 60-m towers, while most turbine hub heights are 80-m and more. Actual 80+ meter data is accepted at face value. WindPole says it improves wind project finance and accelerates grid integration for top wind developers, government, ISO/RTO, project operators and industry analysts. The company provides real time, hub-height wind resource data from a network of 12,000 80-m towers.
The bottom line, says WindPole CEO Steve Kropper, is that any project without actual hub height data is disadvantaged in today’s project-finance environment. He says he has heard developers report that a $50,000 investment in data from an 80-m WindPole tower garners $7 million in additional debt financing on a 100 MW project because the extrapolation uncertainty is removed. “As we move the P-99 net capacity factor up a full point, finance terms improve,” says Kropper.
WindPole Ventures
www.windpole.com
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