Map and Assess Virginia’s Offshore Wind Energy Resources on your iPad

Under the direction of the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy, Timmons Group collaborated with researchers and scientists from the Virginia Center for Wind Energy at James Madison University and WeatherFlow Inc. to develop the Wind, Weather and Energy Viewer on the recently deployed Virginia Offshore Wind Website http://wind.jmu.edu/offshore. The Wind, Weather and Energy Viewer is found at http://vawinds.timmons.com and offers users the ability to access both real time meteorological conditions based upon an array of both public and private data sensors as well as modeled wind and energy production estimates at user defined locations within Virginia’s nearshore and offshore environments. The Wind, Weather and Energy Viewer is supported by WeatherFlow’s Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS). Marty Bell, the Director of Research and Modeling at WeatherFlow commented “it’s exciting to see next generation products from operational research being made readily available to the off-shore wind energy community.”

The tablet-friendly application features state of the art mapping functionality built on top of an HTML5 web-based mobile platform. Chris Gerecke, Director of Enterprise Solutions at Timmons Group, notes: “Timmons Group was able to leverage our vast experience in HTML5-based geospatial decision support systems to allow users to intuitively visualize real time data in order to provide a user friendly data platform for energy production estimates from potential offshore wind locations.”

About the Virginia Center for Wind Energy at James Madison University

The Virginia Center for Wind Energy aims to provide convenient access to the most useful tools and resources to individuals and organizations that have either a vested or a passing interest in wind power as it applies within the Commonwealth of Virginia.

About Timmons Group

Timmons Group is a leading provider of geospatial, information architecture and engineering services focusing on developing intuitive, enterprise geospatial web applications, highly-usable, cross-device mobile applications, and integrated, geospatially-enabled enterprise solutions. Timmons Group develops solutions across multiple platforms, including Adobe Flex/Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, JavaScript, HTML5, and native mobile operating systems. Timmons Group is a privately held ENR 500 company and maintains a strong business partner relationship with Esri. Timmons Group has been a recipient of both the Esri Business Partner of the Year award and the Esri Foundation Partner of the Year award. For more information, visit www.timmonsgis.com.

About WeatherFlow Inc.

WeatherFlow Inc. is a leader in the private sector weather industry, with over two decades of experience in applying the latest in observational, modeling, and forecasting technology to challenging problems. WeatherFlow is leading a multi-year Virginia off-shore wind resource assessment campaign incorporating surface and boundary layer observations, a state-of-the-art modeling system and new strategies in operational forecasting and uncertainty analysis.

Team members work out of offices in six states, with highly trained and seasoned professionals working in engineering, modeling, data handling, web development, customer service, and business development functions.

With its proprietary observing network at the heart of the company, WeatherFlow has brought a steady stream of innovative value-added products and services to market, filling highly specific needs in many sectors, including plume dispersion, emergency management, hazardous weather alerting, hurricane measurements, insurance and financial products, maritime operations, wind energy, the National Mesonet, and others.

WeatherFlow continues to maintain and improve these offerings going forward, with particular emphasis on the National Mesonet, wind energy, and the development of applications for mobile devices.