Unlike residential, we'll probably want to undertake detailed great resource evaluation for our large project. For large renewable energy projects, we will want to empirically validate public data. For wind energy projects, we will probably undertake a year(s)-long wind study. For hydropower, we will want a multi-year watershed study with extensive geologic study of the dam site. For geothermal, we want a multi-month geologic survey to validate the geothermal resources available. For biomass, we'll want validation of the biomass supply chain. And for ocean energy, we'll want extended wave and current analysis. Let's look at these in more detail. For large solar projects, considerations for forecasting solar energy production include the following. We need to collect solar insolation data. We might use the online Global Solar Atlas as a starting point, but probably for the largest projects we'll want direct measurement for one year or more. We'll also need to calculate panel degradation, that is, how much the panel actually produces in power versus this nameplate capacity. We'll need to include panel shading and soiling, temperature and time factors. Other derate factors such as wiring and inverter losses, seasonality, snow and so forth. At the end, we need a good estimate as how much solar energy we can collect from our site. For large wind energy projects, we'll want to undertake careful assessment of local wind resources. We'll want to collect wind characteristics such as wind speed and direction, wind shear, turbulence and roughness and air density and humidity over a long period of time. We'll use meteorological met masts for this as shown in the pictures to the right. We'll collect data for 1 to 5 years depending on the size of the project. And again, we'll want the mean wind speed and distribution over that period of time. We'll want to construct a wind rose. We'll need to know wind shear and turbulence and finally air density, pressure and temperature. All of these will go into calculations for how much energy we can derive from the wind at this particular site. Our hydropower projects, two factors are critical, the hydraulic head, that is, how high the dam can be and volumetric flow rate, that is, how much water can flow through the dam's turbine. Other factors to measure are seasonality of flow, uncertainty of flow restrictions on the flow such as water conservation restrictions or ecological constraints. And finally, of course, the geology and engineering of the dam site. Can we build a dam here effectively? Assessing geothermal resources can be extensive, time consuming and expensive. Steps for geothermal assessment include, looking for surface manifestations such as hot springs and geysers. Then undertaking surface geochemistry where we analyze the water coming up from the underground resource that tells us a lot about what's down there. Next is subsurface geophysics where we map the extent of the underground resource. And finally exploratory drilling, which verifies that the results of the previous studies are accurate. We then can create a resource map of the underground resource and plan a field development strategy, that is to say, how are we going to extract energy over time from that underground resource? For large biomass energy projects, we'll need to assess the availability and quality of the biomass stream, including the quantity available per unit time, seasonal variability, surety of ongoing supply perhaps for decades, the energy content of the biomass stream, any transportation required to bring the biomass to our plant and storage requirements at the plant to store the biomass, pre processing requirements will need to be understood. And finally, disposal of after products such as ash, sludge and bio waste will need to be planned for. Measuring oceanic energy will vary widely by the type of energy we're trying to extract. It could be wave energy, aquatic current energy or tidal energy. Methods for measuring each of these will vary very significantly, one from the other. So in summary, here's a checklist of activities to undertake for project resource assessment. First, we want to estimate the resource availability of the resource from either public information or more likely direct measurement for large projects. We want to determine the variability of the resource be it daily, monthly or seasonally or even yearly. We want to create a time-based profile of energy availability. And finally, we want to calculate the mean annual energy and estimate high-low bounds on that availability, so that we know exactly what we're getting into with our project
