The Asian Development Bank released a publication "Guidelines for Wind Resource Assessment: Best Practices for Countries Initiating Wind Development". Pramod Jain is the lead author. It may be downloaded from:
http://www.adb.org/publications/guidelines-wind-resource-assessment-best...
Wind Resource Assessment (WRA) is a pivotal step in the development phase of a wind project. Even if the wind resource is sufficient for a viable project, the difference between a bankable and non-bankable WRA is the amount of due diligence exercised during the performance of wind measurement and wind flow modeling to compute AEP. With respect to due diligence, financiers look for efforts by developers to reduce uncertainty during the WRA and the ability of developers to estimate the remaining uncertainty.
Based on the author’s experiences in countries with emerging wind energy markets, a large fraction of developers (i) do not conduct WRAs with sufficient due diligence and (ii) do not adequately understand the concept of uncertainty and its implications on the bankability of a WRA. There are various reasons: ignorance about requirements of bankable WRAs and/or lack of funds to invest in the development activity.
Key policy support required for WRAs are the following:
(i) Rigorous licensing preconditions for wind farms, with clearly stated requirements and checklist for WRAs, with an intent to inform developers upfront about the quality of bankable WRAs.
(ii) Low-cost financing or grants for qualified wind energy developers to perform WRAs.
(iii) Long-term quality wind measurement campaign in order to: collect reference data, which will reduce uncertainty; and map the wind resources to a greater level of detail in areas with promising wind resources.
(iv) Capacity building to transfer knowledge about best practices of WRAs.
