Major Wind Developer Brings Remote Sensing to Projects Worldwide

SOMERVILLE, Mass., Nov. 2, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Formed in 2007 to finance the development of wind farms in Central and Eastern Europe, Continental Wind Partners (CWP) has adopted Second Wind's Triton Sonic Wind Profiler as a part of its standard wind resource assessment practice. With a fleet of eight Tritons, CWP is using advanced remote sensing technology to expedite wind farm development, reduce project uncertainty and streamline project financing at sites in five Eastern European countries.

In addition to its development activities in Eastern Europe, CWP is an investment partner in several projects in Australia, partnering with Wind Prospect (WPCWP) to deploy additional Tritons in Australian development activities.

Triton is an advanced remote sensing system that uses sodar (sound detection and ranging) technology to measure wind at higher heights than the previous tower-based standard. By measuring wind speeds at the turbine rotor's hub height and beyond (up to 200 meters), Triton reduces uncertainty in annual energy production (AEP) forecasts. Triton's ease of deployment also streamlines the wind farm development process.

Triton has achieved global market leadership and continues to be adopted by the world's leading wind farm developers as a way to complement met tower-based measurements. Triton has been in commercial use since April 2008 with over 200 Tritons now installed worldwide.

"Although met tower data remains a key part of wind project financing, remote sensing is becoming more and more necessary to reduce uncertainty by measuring hub height wind conditions," said Konrad Gorzkowski, Wind & Site Engineer at CWP. "Triton has become an essential part of our development toolkit. We like Triton because of its low power requirements, mobility, and data reliability – and we look forward to using Triton data to support energy yield predictions required to arrange financing for projects in our pipeline."

CWP uses Tritons to support many aspects of its project development activities, and has accumulated nearly 100,000 hours of Triton data in Central and Eastern Europe. At the earliest phase of the development cycle, Tritons are deployed for wind prospecting – taking an initial measurement of a site's resources to determine whether the site qualifies for a lengthier study with meteorological towers. On sites with existing met towers, CWP has deployed a Triton at several locations around the site to better map the available wind resources, an approach known as micro-siting. "Triton always correlates well to the met tower measurements and provides valuable information on each site's large height shear profile," said Maciej Baginski, Wind Measurement and GIS Specialist at PS Wind Management, CWP's Poland-based development group.

Triton is expected to give CWP an advantage in securing project financing. In one example, a single Triton was deployed at five different locations on a greenfield site that already had a met tower installed. The Triton measurements reduced this project's resource uncertainty by three percent, compared with use of the met tower data alone, which directly led to a considerably higher P75 figure.

"CWP and Wind Prospect are two highly respected wind companies," said Peter Gibson, VP of sales at Second Wind. "We look forward to helping them measure hub-height wind conditions, thus reducing resource uncertainty and increasing the value of their wind projects worldwide."

About Continental Wind Partners LLC (CWP)

CWP is a leading player in renewable energy, with a primary focus in wind energy, one of the most rapidly developing branches of the energy sector. CWP's pipeline of projects currently totals more than 6,000 MW of wind assets in different stages of development.  CWP has successfully developed and constructed a 600 MW wind farm project in Romania and continues to expand through new partnerships with local developers.

About Second Wind

Second Wind develops wind measurement systems that make wind power pay off for consumers, investors and the environment. The company's technology provides wind farm developers with the bankable wind data they need to plan, finance and operate highly efficient wind generation facilities. Second Wind's systems are making wind farm development profitable in 50 countries on seven continents. Second Wind's systems include Triton, the wind industry's leading remote sensing system, Nomad 2 wind data logger systems, the ProMast 60, a 60-meter meteorological mast and the SkyServe® web-based data service. For more information about Boston-based Second Wind, please visit www.secondwind.com.

SOURCE Second Wind