The U.S. map shows locations for 7,000 “fast” towers over 80m. Windpole says it can have data flowing in 90 days.
WindPole Ventures says it has added 1,536, 80+m towers to its wind resource assessment portfolio. The towers are located from Maine to Washington state with a concentration of 720 in the Midwest ISO load-balancing area. This expansion results in over 7,000 Tier 1 towers from which the company can start the flow of bankable data within 90 days. An additional 3,500 Tier 2 towers (available in 120 days) are also in WindPole’s portfolio. The company says its mission is to provide accurate, hub height wind resource data as a service with no capital cost or maintenance obligations by developers. The company provides IEC compliant data at 1/2 to 1/3 of the cost of erecting a new tower. “The tightening of project finance standards means that data from short 60 meter tilt-up towers may have unacceptable uncertainty,” said company founder and president Steve Kropper. “Short-tower data results in less attractive financing terms because projecting short tower data has a wide dispersion and is considered more risky by investors.”
Locations and configurations for the towers are recommended by Voltage-Bar, LLC, a veteran wind-industry consultant. WindPole installs redundant instruments at 40, 60, and 80 m and higher, maintains the sensors, and provides high-resolution data either once a month or every five minutes. “Like the real estate business, our value to developers is ‘location, location, location’, said Kropper. These 7,000 tall towers can provide on-site data letting developers de-risk projects and operators improve intraday forecasts. The company will continue to expand its network.”
When a developer specifies a target development parcel, the company says it will generate a tower proximity report within 24 hours. Alternately, the company makes the database of towers available for search by project developers. The additions and the entire company portfolio are available on Google Earth in KMZ format. A new ARC GIS Shape file will be available in September on request.
WindPole Ventures LLC
www.WindPole.com
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