Sustainable energy company Avangrid has announced that it will start using advanced forecasting services from weather intelligence provider StormGeo for its onshore wind farms across the USA.
Ty Kristensen, director of Avangrid’s National Control Center for the company’s renewables business, said, “Safety is our most important goal. As such, we must have accurate and timely alerts when lightning or high wind speeds might pose a risk to crews working around high-voltage equipment, performing up-tower maintenance or crane operations. Additionally, having 48-hour and seven-day forecasts allows us to drill down to quickly identify the likelihood that weather conditions will disrupt maintenance activities. Overall, we were impressed with the high-quality visualizations in the portal and StormGeo’s reputation for rarely having system outages.”
A member of the Iberdrola Group, Avangrid will utilize StormGeo’s technology to monitor severe weather, including lighting, high winds and tropical storms for 63 onshore windfarms comprised of approximately 4,000 collective wind turbines.
Ken Carrier, vice president of onshore at StormGeo, said, “StormGeo provides services to more than 100 energy producers and utility companies across North America. Our experience working in this industry makes us uniquely qualified to provide top-notch, customized weather and operational decision guidance to Avangrid Renewables. We see this as an exciting opportunity to support a world-class company and to continue expanding our services to the US onshore and offshore wind industry.”
Forecasting for Avangrid is delivered by StormGeo’s 24/7 operations center in Houston, Texas.