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Modeled Wind Resource Data

At any site worldwide. Onshore and offshore.

Wind Farm Development Made Easy

Vortex is an online atmospheric modeling service addressed to the technical Wind & Site departments that provide global estimations of wind at places or periods where no measurements are available.

How Can Vortex Help You?

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We Believe the Wind
Can Be Modeled.

Frequently Asked Questions

Vortex uses a supercomputer cluster to run a non-linear flow model (WRF) that scales large atmospheric patterns (NCAR-NCEP, ECMWF and NASA) down to fine spatial resolutions (SRTM), generating modelled wind resource data suitable to be used where and when no measurements are as yet available.
Current wind modellers on the market offer either pre-calculated products or specific studies on a consultancy basis. Pre-calculated modelled wind resource data need to cover the whole world and are therefore simpler than Vortex ones: lower resolutions, linear flow results, etc. Instead, Vortex has automated a full non-linear modelling chain down to the microscale. Each calculation is performed on-demand, only on the client’s area of interest and without a need of a slow human interaction. Vortex is initialised by users, allowing direct interaction between the clients PC and our computer cluster over the Internet. This approach is much faster (and its price more competitive) than consultancy and much more powerful than pre-calculated results of wind resource data.

Vortex’s system core, WRF, is a sophisticated code that has been effectively employed to describe the physics and dynamics of atmospheric circulations with a significant degree of realism at a wide range of scales. WRF is neither a microscale nor large-scale model but is a one-in-all.

WRF accuracy is based on the ability to portray the different mechanisms that interact at each one of the relevant atmospheric scales. The WRF model is the result of years of development by the atmospheric research community combined with additional experience from the extended use for weather forecast applications and modelling wind resource data.

The usual truncation, or simplification, of the equations that control atmospheric movements of air masses, is definitively small in WRF when compared to other lighter atmospheric codes. However, equally as relevant as this non-linear approach, is how the model includes other relevant factors such as radiation, thermal effects, air-sea-land interactions. In this sense, WRF is a modular model that can be adapted for different applications depending on the scale of the atmospheric movements, surface boundaries and thermal characteristic of the air masses, etc.

For microscale applications, the WRF model poses a CFD algorithm based on the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) approach. WhenCFD algorithm based on the LES approach. WhenWRF is coupled to the LES model the result is commonly known as WRF-LES model. This means that the simulation is run as usual but the turbulence parameterisation is replaced by the LES model and hence turbulent eddies are resolved.

Vortex has improved the source code for its implementation for real simulations. This modified version of the model is the so-called Vortex-LES.

LES can mitigate uncertainty in offshore project wind resource assessment analysis by adding the possibility of simulating a virtual mast at any position on the wind turbines layout. Moreover, and in the context of the European offshore development, LES outstanding accurate representation of neutral stability conditions ensure more realistic estimation of vertical profiles in sites across North and Baltic seas.

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