Welcome to the WindIQ™ Knowledge Center.
When we began talking last year about the WindIQ initiative, we were looking for a way to understand and communicate our company's higher purpose. For 30 years, we have been creating systems to help the wind power industry measure wind, record wind data, and use the measurements to help in planning, siting, and operating wind farms. Our company leaders believed when they began Second Wind, and they still believe, that good decisions require good data.
When we started talking about what our customers do with all this data we give them, we realized that all the data is nearly useless unless it is translated into information. In other words, someone or something needs to make sense of this data.
In fact, we have a tool that makes sense of this wind data. Our customers had been using our SkyServe wind data service not only to view and store their data, but also to quickly understand it. Although we never claimed (and still don't claim) that SkyServe is a substitute for a meteorologist or consultant, SkyServe gives our customers a rapid first look at their wind data. We realized that our company actually exists not only to provide data, but to assist our customers in translating the data into a higher form: information. If our company exists as a pyramid with technology on the first level and data on the second, information and insight are at the top.
As we thought about the challenges the wind industry faces as turbine technology advances and the landscape becomes more competitive (both within the renewables sectors and within the energy sectors at large), we realized that it is vital to understand the role wind information can play in making wind farms more feasible. This brought us full circle to our original mission, which is to provide the wind industry with feasibility tools. We do it through technology, data, and the expertise to help our customers translate the data into information.
The goal of our WindIQ initiative is to promote the industry's best uses of wind information. How can the industry leverage wind information to improve productivity, given the limitations of measurement systems and historical data? Can the same systems that work in the pre-development phase of wind farms also be used to improve operations, maintenance, and repowering decisions? What are the risks and benefits of putting up turbines in unusual wind conditions and how much do we need to understand about the wind at a site before we put up a turbine?
The Knowledge Center is partly a forum for discussion of these issues, and partly a collection of resources for wind industry professionals, students, and the general public - anyone who wants to learn more about wind information.