Zephyr North Ltd.

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Description

Zephyr North is an independent consulting company with over 15 years experience providing a full range of wind resource assessment services to the wind energy industry. Among our capabilities are:

» Acquisition, analysis and evaluation of historical wind resource data
» Design, installation and maintenance of wind monitoring systems, including data collection, quality assurance and analysis
» Sophisticated, state-of-the-art numerical modelling of regional and site-specific; wind resources accounting for anemometer sheltering, topography and vegetation/land-use
» Optimization and feasibility studies for wind energy installations (including cost analyses)
» High quality presentation of results, recommendations and best-fit options
» Advice and consultation to all participants in the wind energy community


Zephyr North's principal, Dr. Jim Salmon (accredited by the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society), was key in the development of the internationally recognized computer software package MS-Micro* for numerical modelling of wind flow in complex terrain. He has further contributed to the development of additional software related to wind resource assessment.

* Zephyr North is the exclusive distributor of MS-Micro for the Atmospheric Environment Service of Environment Canada.


FIELD MEASUREMENTS

Zephyr North has extensive experience across Canada and internationally in making wind and other meteorological measurements. Some features of our wind measurement capabilities are:

» Site selection: including map investigations, field surveys and sophisticated numerical modelling.

» Instrumentation: robust, high quality sensors and data loggers with calibrations traceable to NIST (US) standards.

» Towers: from a custom-designed 10 m tower to 50 m tilt-up towers, or using existing towers.

» Data acquisition: on-site, land-line or cellular telephone, radio and satellite data collection; Internet data transfer.

» Data recovery: typically greater than 95%.

» Data quality assurance: all data collected by Zephyr North are subjected to stringent, automated quality-control procedures followed by careful visual examination.


DATA ANALYSIS

Zephyr North has developed a complete suite of computer programs to process data into tables and graphs which describe the wind resource in detail. Further capabilities include:

» Correlation of on-site data with historical data for prediction of the long-term wind regime.
» Surrogate calculations to estimate long-term turbine generation capabilities.


NUMERICAL MODELLING

Refinement of the accuracy of on-site and regional historical data requires analysis with proven numerical models. At Zephyr North we routinely use:

» MS-Micro*: a suite of programs for predicting the effects of complex terrain on wind flow - used for correction of historical data sets; prediction of the wind regime as well as to optimize turbine locations; we have created a custom version of MS-Micro with many enhancements for exclusive use at Zephyr North.
» ShelCorr*: a program for correction of the effects of upwind obstacles on wind data sets
» TurbPower*: an interactive program for quick estimation of wind turbine energy generation
» WasP and PARK: programs for wind resource assessment developed in Denmark and the European Community

*developed by Zephyr North wholly or in part.


Careful measurement, insightful data analysis and relevant computer modelling combined with scientific and technical merit, industry experience and attention to detail - this is what Zephyr North provides.

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