Pondera has entered into a license agreement with Whiffle to use Whiffle’s innovative model called GRASP (GPU-resident Atmospheric Simulation Platform). With Whiffle’s GRASP model, Pondera puts itself on the forefront of wind resource modelling.
Whiffle’s unique technology involves Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) for running the weather simulations and allows users of the model to perform wind studies with LES (Large Eddy Simulation) at unmatched resolutions. The GRASP model allows users to accurately capture local weather and flow phenomena impacting the wind energy production of wind turbines such as global blockage effects, internal and external wake effects, land-sea interaction, impact of buildings, vegetation, wave conditions and many more.
Through the licensing agreement, Pondera will leverage Whiffle’s technology to further advance their wind flow modelling capabilities. The model provides a solution for wind farms where the wind flow is more difficult to predict, such as large wind farms where conventional wake models fall short or wind farms in areas where high turbulence is expected. Wind resource assessment projects led by Pondera will benefit from reduced uncertainty in the annual energy yield prediction, improved layout optimisation and an improved understanding of the local wind climate. In general, clients of Pondera will benefit from the higher resolution weather model by obtaining a more realistic and detailed answer on their wind energy related questions.
Erik Holtslag, Business Developer, Pondera: “I am proud to see that we can now support our clients even further, also in the realm of advanced modelling of wind flow, turbulence and improved wake-accuracy. Already in the first set of projects where we have applied the GRASP model, we see significantly improved understanding of the atmosphere. This leads to better financing grade P90-forecasts and much more detailed design parameterisations. We are happy to see that the collaboration with Whiffle, initiated with our joint Hollandse Kust (noord) project for RVO in 2018, has led to this agreement which enables us at Pondera to use Whiffle’s cutting-edge software ourselves for advanced wind flow modelling.”
Remco Verzijlbergh, Whiffle’s Director of Operations: “We are very happy to welcome Pondera as a client and to support them in making the break-through LES technology available for their clients. Nowadays, many sites experience the effects of obstacles and neighbouring wind energy projects that impact the production. Our technology works at very high resolution, calculating all physics of the wind flow and the wake and blockage effects, to benefit the developers with higher accuracy and more insight in the layout.”