RAM Associates, a wind resource assessment consulting firm, has released its patent-pending RAMWind terrain/wind speed modeling software.
The company says RAMWind has been shown to be effective in modeling subtle variations in wind speed due to terrain – a measure that is necessary in order to determine wake losses in operating wind farms and to prepare more accurate per-turbine wind speed estimates in basic resource assessment.
RAMWind utilizes the collective intelligence of all met towers on a project site to determine the relationship between their wind speeds and terrain exposure parameters in an ensemble approach. Thus, the model adapts to local conditions at each wind farm site based on the observed data, RAM Associates explains.
RAMWind V1.0 can be used to model two levels of wind speed, wind shear alpha exponent and Weibull k. Output products from RAMWind include text format (CSV files) as well as WAsP-compatible RSF files, wind parameter maps in text format (CSV) and WAsP-compatible WRG files.
