Dec 10 2010
Renewable Energy Systems (RES), a renewable energy developing and constructing company, has recently put into service its third Triton Sonic Wind Profiler, manufactured by Second Wind, for wind speed assessing purposes.
The company, which started its operations in 1982, has grown into a leading wind energy company. Its group company RES Americas formed in 1997 has either constructed or formulated around 10% of the total installed wind generation capability in the country.
RES Americas, the business arm of Renewable Energy Systems, has deployed the first Triton in its Upper Midwest site by signing a short term rental accord with Second Wind in 2009. It used the Triton to test the reliability of the instrument in the field and to check the performance of the system by comparing the data received from an 80 meter metrological tower located nearby. The instrument qualified in both the tests effectively and proved its withstanding abilities to adverse weather conditions, where the temperature remained close to -30° C and even withstood 0° C temperature for a period of 10 weeks. After the completion of the field tests, RES Americas bought its first Triton in the spring of 2010 and placed it at its Colorado site to measure the wind flow from the high ground close by. Based on its successful testing and usage the company bought its second Triton and installed it in the Central Plains for verifying the hub height and shear profile above it.
Andy Oliver, VP Technologies of RES Americas, said that the wind data analysis is important to assess the cost of wind energy. He added that the clients need more concrete data to commence their wind projects. He added that the data collected by utilizing the Tritons when correlated with that of the data collected from met towers offers a clear idea about the wind speed over the towers.
Triton is an advanced type of remote sensing system that incorporates sodar (sound detection and ranging) expertise to measure the force of wind at higher level heights over the tower. By assessing speeds at such heights the equipment lessens the vagueness in determining the annual energy production (AEP) estimates and assists in streamlining the wind farm installation processes. Second Wind has sold over 210 tritons since April 2008 and the instruments are used in various countries all over the world.
Source: http://www.res-americas.com/