MetMasts UK is pleased to announce the launch of a new low-cost wind monitoring service aimed at the small scale wind turbine market (5-20 kW).
The service includes site assessment, wind monitoring and average annual energy yield prediction. The product development was performed by Heidra under contract to Renewable Energy for Devon.
By far the biggest uncertainty when purchasing and installing a small scale wind turbine is the actual wind resource available at your site. MetMast’s aim is to reduce this uncertainty and aid the planning application process.
Traditionally small scale wind turbine installations have relied on the government provided wind data base, NOABL, to assess potential sites. NOABL is regarded by the large scale wind industry as unreliable and they have developed their own “meso scale” wind models. However, in the small scale market, the cost of reliable wind assessments has been too expensive in comparison to the cost of the turbine. An example of the problems encountered is given in our simplified case study.
The system uses industry standard components such as NRG anemometers and wind vanes together with a Campbell Scientific data logger. Embedded mobile phone communications automates data recovery and allows regular checking and processing.
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