Wind and Solar Anomaly Data and Custom Solutions

Understanding the wind or solar resource available for power generation is an essential input to understanding plant output. If your operating assets have deviated from their performance goals, you should investigate if resource variability impacted production.

At any given wind or solar plant location across the globe, the resource anomaly, expressed as percent deviation from the long-term average (wind speed or global horizontal irradiance (GHI)), provides a key metric to gauge a plant’s energy production performance relative to the resource available. UL Solutions’ wind and solar anomaly data can help characterize trends and level-set expectations based on the resource available for power production at individual plants or across a portfolio.

Wind and solar anomaly data can be used to:

• Evaluate historical monthly, quarterly or annual plant performance relative to the resource available.
• Characterize the resource variability at plants, and identify anomalous or atypical periods.
• Identify deviations from resource estimates used in preconstruction energy estimates.
• Assess the benefit of a wind and/or solar portfolio diversified across different regions.
• Study long-term resource trends and its variability at multiple timescales.

Wind or solar anomaly maps and data

UL Solutions offers wind resource and GHI anomaly maps, data or custom solutions on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis by subscription, or by individual sale. 

Get timely access to the Wind and Solar Trends

UL Solutions now offers a paid subscription to receive early access to wind and solar resource anomaly maps and data (based on Wind and Solar Trends bulletins). Paying subscribers will receive an email with the monthly, quarterly or annual data for a specified region of interest within 5-10 business days after month’s end.

Wind speed or GHI anomaly standard deliverables

• Heat map images (PDF)
• Gridded data (GeoTIFF)
• Wind at 100-meter hub height
• Calculated for each month, quarter or year
• Available by country, state, province, plant or portfolio¹ 
• Standard baseline period updated monthly*

Plant or fleet resource anomalies

• Heat maps, gridded data and tabular indices calculated for a specific plant or by fleet*

_{*12-month subscriptions are available at a discount}

Custom data

UL Solutions can customize deliverables to meet customer needs when standard methods or regional granularity does not suffice. UL Solutions works directly with customers to develop unique solutions that address our customer’s needs.

Resource anomaly maps or data

• Wind anomalies or speed values at a specified hub height
• Anomaly indices and maps calculated using a customer-specified long-term baseline, e.g., 2000-2020  
• Long-term inter-annual variability of wind or solar
• Historical wind or solar anomaly data, e.g.,1995-present 
• Customized monthly reports for internal reporting

Plant or fleet power anomaly

Plant generation anomalies are also available on a subscription basis. This customized setup uses plant-specific static details for producing generation anomalies with UL Solutions’ in-house power conversion suite.

Climatological extremes and variability

Characterizing near-current anomalies in the context of the long-term is valuable information to understand the lowest or worst-case, and highest or best-case resource or production scenarios. For example, correlating mesoscale events with resource anomalies to derive the probabilities of resource anomalies, e.g., P-50 or P-90, or to characterize monthly or seasonal extremes. 

If variability is an important metric to you, let us help you understand the unexpected.
 
_{¹ State and provinces for US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, China, India and Australia. Plant or Portfolio maps require a nominal setup fee.}