© 2009 3TIER, Inc.

3TIERa renewable energy information services companyBart NijssenChief Information Officer

AMS Summer Community MeetingAugust 11 2009

© 2009 3TIER, Inc.

Our industry

Source: Energy Information Administration, Office of Coal,

Nuclear, Electric and Alternate Fuels, 2007

Weather-driven renewable energy generation

© 2009 3TIER, Inc.

Rapid growth – 20% wind scenario US

© 2009 3TIER, Inc.

Rapid growth – BPA Balancing Area

Source: BPA Factsheet, Mar 2009

© 2009 3TIER, Inc.

Intermittent

Weather-Driven Renewables

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Variable

Weather-Driven Renewables

© 2009 3TIER, Inc.

3TIER - renewable energy information services

Prospecting and Pre-feasibility

Feasibility and Due Diligence

Design and Construction Operations

© 2009 3TIER, Inc.

3TIER

PeopleComputers

Scalable delivery platforms

Market penetration examples:• Operational wind energy forecasts for > 10,000 MW of installed capacity• 30 thousand registered users of FirstLook® (firstlook.3tier.com)

© 2009 3TIER, Inc.

Observational data needs

» Historic records› Establish climatology

› Calibrate and train models

› Analog forecasts

» Real-time › Used directly in forecast generation

© 2009 3TIER, Inc.

3TIER Hour Ahead Forecast System

© 2009 3TIER, Inc.

Impact of off-site observations

Days

Cum

ula

tive A

dvanta

ge

(MW

h)Advantage Over Hourly Persistence

© 2009 3TIER, Inc.

Requirements

» Timeliness› Is becoming even more important as people become more

interested in short-term forecasts (e.g. next 30 minutes at 5 minute increments)

» Standardized metadata

» Quality assurance / quality control

© 2009 3TIER, Inc.

Closing remarks

» 3TIER does not collect the observations directly -> agnostic to where it comes from

» Meteorological observations cover only part of the data needs required for power forecasting (power data, turbine availability, etc)

» Data owners are generally very protective of their own data

© 2009 3TIER, Inc.

www.3tier.com