Vaisala, an environmental and industrial measurement company, has partnered with the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) to provide free access to its global renewable energy resource data.
Under the partnership, Vaisala is making its average annual solar irradiation and wind speed maps available for free download via IRENA’s Global Atlas for Renewable Energy. In doing so, IRENA and Vaisala say they are giving developers, policymakers, and researchers access to globally consistent resource data that can be used in setting policy and performing initial project planning and prospecting.
The new download feature in IRENA’s Global Atlas platform will allow users to integrate Vaisala’s wind and solar datasets into their own software and modeling programs. In turn, the partners say, this will enable developers to conduct offline analysis to inform prospecting efforts in new territories and ultimately influence investment decisions.
Nicolas Fichaux, senior program officer at IRENA, says he is proud of the group’s progress the Global Atlas has made since it was launched in 2013.
“Our common goal is to accelerate the growth of renewables worldwide. To do, this we need to increase the confidence of governments, investors, and the supply chain in new and emerging renewable energy markets – and for this, we need maps to show us where the resources are,” explains Fichaux.
“By pushing the boundaries of publicly available resource data, IRENA and Vaisala are helping the sector to move faster by lowering the complexity of entry into new renewable energy markets,” he continues. “The private sector recognizes the challenge, and this contribution from Vaisala demonstrates their continued support of our goals.”
Pascal Storck, global manager of energy services at Vaisala, adds, “Working with IRENA as part of the Global Atlas initiative gives us the opportunity to maximize the reach of our global wind and solar datasets to the benefit of the international renewable energy development community and its ambitions in promising new markets.”
Vaisala’s data can be downloaded from the Vaisala map in the Global Atlas in GeoTIFF format in portions of 4 MB. Vaisala says its global solar dataset provides average annual GHI at 3 km resolution. The data is based on over 10 years of hourly data derived from satellite imagery and validated against ground measurements. Meanwhile, the company adds, the wind dataset provides average annual wind speeds at a height of 80 meters and a resolution of 5 km, based on 10 years of hourly data from simulations and validated against ground measurements.