3TIER and IRENA collaborate to give researchers access to better renewable energy information

3TIER®, a global leader in renewable energy assessment and forecasting, today announced the public release of wind and solar annual averages from its global datasets in support of research and advocacy groups around the world. Through its collaboration with the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), 3TIER is excited to make this contribution to the global energy community and vastly improve access to wind and solar resource information. The data will now be available via IRENA’s Global Renewable Energy Atlas, an open-access online platform that provides free information and assessments of renewable energy potential to policy makers, investors, and other researchers worldwide.

3TIER’s data will support experts such as IRENA’s Gauri Singh and other partners involved in the Africa Clean Energy Corridor initiative, evaluating what can be done in terms of transmission and policy planning over the next 20 years to accelerate the expansion of renewable power sources along a power grid stretching from Egypt to South Africa. It will also aid the U.N. Sustainable Energy for All initiative, an ambitious effort to ensure universal access to modern, sustainable energy; double the rate of improvement of energy efficiency; and double the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix by the year 2030.

“Reliable access to energy is a key driver of economic, political, and social stability,” said Gauri Singh, director of country support and partnerships at IRENA. “Globally over 1.3 billion people are without access to electricity. More than 95% of these people are either in sub-Saharan African or developing Asia and 84% are in rural areas. Updated, high resolution datasets, like 3TIER's, allow countries to do advanced analysis of resource assessment and help guide policy frameworks that promote renewables."

“IRENA provides a wide variety of renewable energy information to support countries in their transition to more sustainable energy sources,” said Adnan Z. Amin, director-general of IRENA. “With the addition of 3TIER’s cohesive and consistent global dataset of wind and solar resources, we now have a much more complete offering that will help move policy and infrastructure planning forward.”

“In light of the climate change challenges now facing our planet, we must build a new energy system that will help combat its effects,” said Craig Husa, 3TIER CEO. “To aid that effort, 3TIER is bringing our information to people like Gauri Singh, through tools energy researchers already use on a daily basis. With this move we are saying to the world, this is your data now, put it to good work.”

3TIER’s global datasets were originally developed to enable country to continent-scale wind and solar analysis for aggregate research studies looking at the global energy picture and evaluating strategies for a smarter and more sustainable power grid. The annual average maps and underlying datasets make it possible to analyze renewable energy potential, impediments to grid integration, and the pros and cons of various energy policies and incentive programs.

3TIER’s wind and solar datasets are also the most advanced global datasets ever created and provide a more sophisticated alternative to other publicly available sources. Each dataset offers annual average values created using proven, widely-accepted scientific techniques and derived from long-term historical weather models of 10 or more years at high spatial resolutions. The solar dataset, for example, has a resolution 3 to 30 times higher than any other publicly available data source. For project level planning, 3TIER offers wind and solar energy assessment and forecasting services and has years of experience working with the largest utility-scale developers, operators, and financing partners around the world.

Information from IRENA’s Global Atlas is available here: www.irena.org/globalatlas.

For more information about 3TIER, visit www.3tier.com.