NREL Integrates Intertrust Climate and Weather API to Enhance Wind Energy Analytics Software

Intertrust has announced the integration of its Planet OS weather data API into the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) OpenOA (Operational Assessment) software to enhance performance of operational assessments of wind energy plants.

 OpenOA helps wind energy development planners more accurately estimate energy production from wind plants and other operational assets. The joint solution allows wind energy experts to understand weather variability, which is critical to planning renewable energy systems.  

NREL is the leading U.S. federal government R&D center focused on renewable energy, energy systems, energy efficiency, energy systems integration and sustainable transportation. The NREL OpenOA framework is developed to provide references of common wind energy operational analytics methods to address the lack of standardization of these methods in the wind industry.   

The core feature of OpenOA is a state-of-the-art method for estimating the long-term annual energy production (AEP) of a wind plant based on a few years of operational data. This long-term AEP analysis method can be used to determine the accuracy of preconstruction energy yield estimates, help detect underperformance, and assist with financial transactions involving the wind plant.   

OpenOA requires access to data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service’s ERA5 and NASA’s MERRA2 global climate retrospective analysis models. Previously, analysts were required to provide these data themselves when using OpenOA. In the new version of OpenOA, users can go to Planet OS Datahub, sign up for an API key, and integrate ERA5 and MERRA2 data into their workflow through using the Planet OS API. Through this integration, Planet OS provides this data in a seamless, fast, and reliable manner, which is essential to the OpenOA workflow. Planet OS Datahub is a companion data application to Intertrust Platform, an interoperability layer giving organizations the capability to securely and efficiently manage diverse datasets and devices.  

“By accurately estimating energy production from wind plants and other operational assets, the combination of OpenOA with Intertrust PlanetOS’ weather data API will be a huge asset for wind farm owners and planners to better understand their operations and projected output”, said Eneli Toodu, Climate Data Technologist at Intertrust.