WindSider: Building the next-generation wind energy development platform

The WindSider consortium consists of key players in the industry who took a major role in the Global Wind Atlas and the New European Wind Atlas (3E, DTU Wind Energy, nazka mapps), and of leading European ICT players (SingularLogic, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid).

Within the WindSider project nazka demonstrates their expertise in building an innovative interactive web mapping interface. The WindSider application will be built on top of nazka’s Mapframe, which makes use of the most recent web technologies and allows for an immersive user experience.

Also the nazka expertise on remote sensing is very relevant to the project: Generating land cover information on-the-fly is an important and innovative asset of the WindSider project. In the New European Wind Atlas project, nazka has developed a prototype land cover classifier which makes use of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 data. Studies have shown that the land cover information extracted from Sentinel-2 data can significantly improve wind resource modelling results.

Mapps that matter: renewable energy

As has been the case for all of the nazka projects, also this project delivers value in aspects that matter. By building the WindSider tool, nazka – together with the consortium – makes it easier for companies to estimate the energy capacity for new wind farms before they are being built. nazka firmly believes in the shift towards renewable energy, and actively supports this change.

The WindSider application allows for different locations to be explored in order to evaluate the wind resources. This improves the process of finding a new location with the best overall benefits for building a wind farm. The platform will moreover improve the process of producing bankable reports, which in the current situation is a more time and energy consuming process. 

Phased approach towards ambitious goals

In order to reach the project’s ambitious goals, a phased approach has been put into place. Currently, October 2020, the first version of the minimum viable product (MVP) has been launched. The MVP is not publically accessible yet, but is used by a group of expert business testers, who will provide their valuable feedback to the development team.

In the meantime, behind the screens, everything is being prepared for new features, in an incremental and iterative way. The final WindSider application with a valuable contribution of every consortium partner is aimed to be ready by the summer of 2022.

The WindSider project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement N° 878788.