GH WindFarmer News

Garrad Hassan releases next generation wind farm design software - GH WindFarmer 4.0 - 27th May 2009

Garrad Hassan announces the release of its next generation wind farm design software: GH WindFarmer 4.0

This new version combines the strength of GH WindFarmer 3.6, which is widely used across the wind industry, with major new features including a new wake model for very large wind farms, support for geo-referenced map data, projection conversions, map editing and map digitising. Further features include layout optimisation for a financial target and export to Google Earth. The pricing structure has also been updated in order to facilitate purchase.

GH WindFarmer is developed by Garrad Hassan and is used to design onshore and offshore projects of all sizes. This powerful tool integrates all aspects of wind farm energy and environmental assessments, wind farm layout design and data handling in a user-friendly package, which is recognized for its fast and accurate calculations and is based on highly transparent data models.

Dr. Wolfgang Schlez, leader of Garrad Hassan’s WindFarmer Group, says;

“Users of GH WindFarmer are effectively applying advanced wind farm design tools years ahead of others, which gives them a commercial edge over their competition. We greatly value the feedback of our users and continue to invest in applied research and to embrace technological advances, in order to stay ahead of the market. The development of GH WindFarmer 4.0 follows our tradition of being the cutting edge and we are very pleased with the results.”

For more information and to request a downloadable demo visit the GH WindFarmer pages of our site here

Garrad Hassan releases GH WindFarmer v3.6 - 10th Dec 2007

Garrad Hassan (GH) releases new version 3.6 of its wind farm design software, GH WindFarmer. The leading software package with its powerful features is available in 10 languages and with high quality global support.

This new version provides even more, exclusive features including a detailed uncertainty analysis, expanded site conditions analysis and self-learning tutorials.
The new features in Version 3.6 of GH WindFarmer enable the user to:

Complete uncertainty calculations with standard deviations, historical and future uncertainties and exceedance levels for the net energy yield (P90, P75, etc.)
Compare turbine design parameters with estimates of Design Equivalent Turbulence. Now also according to the German DIBt standard and a number of new options.
Create a turbine ranking table as part of the site conditions report to rapidly identify the least productive turbines.
New WAsP 9 features in particular the new option for masked wind resource grids
Detailed shadow flicker calculations with greater ease of use and new options such as user-defined rotor orientation
Learn how to get the most from GH WindFarmer with additional tutorials for the Base and Visualisation Modules
Now supports Greek, Turkish and a further 8 language options
Support for 64 Bit and Vista operating systems

Dr Wolfgang Schlez, GH WindFarmer manager: ´GH WindFarmer has become the tool of choice for the industry. We are extremely proud of our first class international user support. The new version 3.6 follows the tradition of earlier versions to provide industry professionals with the most advanced technology made easy to use through an intuitive interface.´

If you would like a Demonstration CD please use our contact form.

Garrad Hassan software leads the way in China - 5th Sep 2007

Garrad Hassan (GH) has achieved spectacular success in China with the sale of its wind turbine and wind farm design software products: GH Bladed and GH WindFarmer.

Thesesoftware packages, already established as “industry standard” tools around the world, have been widely welcomed and accepted by wind turbine manufacturers and wind farm design institutions in China.

There are more than 30 licences for GH Bladed in use in China by a range of organisations, including wind turbine manufacturers, blade manufacturers, universities, research institutes and certification agencies. The software has been validated by Germanischer Lloyd and is used by more than 200 licensees around the world for the design of onshore and offshore turbines.

GH WindFarmer - the wind farm design software is currently used by over 50 clients in China. GH WindFarmer is available in Chinese and 9 other languages and has been sold in more than 30 countries. GH WindFarmer is supported from Beijing and around the globe by a team of wind farm design specialists.

GH has also been training Chinese engineers in turbine modelling, load calculation, turbine control design techniques and wind farm design based on the use of GH Bladed and GH WindFarmer.

David Quarton, director responsible for the GH Turbine Design Group, commented “We are delighted that our software tools– GH Bladed and GH WindFarmer have been so widely adopted by the Chinese wind energy industry and we are working hard to provide high quality training and technical support for all our clients in China. Garrad Hassan is very proud that by means of the technology transfer of our software tools and training, we are able to contribute to the rapid growth of the wind energy sector in China.”

Successful GH WindFarmer event at Wind Power Asia - 30th Jul 2007

In conjunction with Wind Power Asia (28-30 June 2007), Garrad Hassan held an evening seminar in Beijing on GH WindFarmer. The seminar complemented the day to day support provided by our Chinese office experts to our users and gave a live introduction for newcomers.

Presented by Dr Gillian Smith, Qi Jian An (Danny) and their colleagues, the seminar proved to be a success. Nearly 40 people joined the event with half already experienced users of the software. The seminar focussed on the application of GH WindFarmer for wind farm design and energy assessment with specific consideration of the terrain and wind conditions found in China. Some of the advanced features of the forthcoming version 3.6 of the software such as a detailed uncertainty calculation and site condition assessment were presented for the first time in China. The visitors made use of the opportunities for questions and individual conversations with our team and other users.

GH WindFarmer is the leading software for wind farm design, a position which is underpinned by more than 50 licences sold in China. GH WindFarmer is being used by large numbers of Chinese as well as international companies that require a high quality wind farm design and assessment tool. The software is now used in almost every province of China, providing an important tool for the many wind farm projects now planned or already under construction.

For further seminars and training courses please refer to our training section.

Garrad Hassan releases GH WindFarmer 3.5 - 26th Mar 2007

The leading wind farm design software has just become even better. New exclusive features include an advanced noise impact assessment, a wake model for large offshore wind farms, new procedures to help you process your wind data and a GL certified link to GH Bladed.

The new features in detail:

Wind speed measurements often contain more data from some months of the year than from others. GH WindFarmer now removes such seasonal bias from the wind resource statistics.
Noise emissions from wind turbines as well as the background noise levels at dwellings will vary with wind speed. The wind speed, however, may well be quite different at the turbine and at the location of the background measurement. Such variation can now be taken into account in GH WindFarmer noise calculation.
Observations from large offshore wind farms show increased wake effects which are not predicted by traditional multi-turbine wake models. The extra model now available in GH WindFarmer allows the user to assess the likely magnitude of these increased effects at every turbine and for the entire wind farm.
Turbulence measurements are evaluated not just for their mean turbulence levels but now also for their standard deviation. This information is then used for the estimate of design equivalent turbulence.
Calculation of the estimated design equivalent turbulence follows international standards IEC 61400-1 Edition 2 and now also Edition 3.
The GH WindFarmer Bladed link provides the wind turbine manufacturer with a powerful tool that directly analyses the fatigue loading of each turbine for the conditions on a particular site. This link tool has been verified and certified by Germanischer Lloyd.
The shadow flicker impact varies from year to year. GH WindFarmer users are now able to select the year for which they want to carry out their calculations.
Last but not least the documentation and online help files have been updated and a self learning tutorial is included.

Request a Demo CD now to explore the features of Version 3.5 for yourself or click here for more information on GH WindFarmer

GH WindFarmer 3.4 - 27th Jan 2006

The world`s leading wind farm design software reaches another significant milestone, providing extended capabilities and putting the latest advances in wind farm technology at your fingertips.

Commerical pressure forces ever closer spacing in wind farms. Building on GH WindFarmer`s existing suite of analysis tools, you have access to the most advanced tools to assess such layouts and balance the losses and dangers against the potential gains and also consider options for mitigation. New in this release are:

Inclusion of wind sector management, so that the effect of turbine shut-down strategies can be explored.
Cutting edge wake modelling for all layouts and wind conditions, including special consideration for rows with very close spacing.
Calculation of the estimated design equivalence turbulence in a wind farm.

The powerful optimisation functions not only take into account numerous environmental and administrative constraints, but now include distance penalty options, finally allowing the impact of infrastructure costs, to be considered in your layout optimisation.

Furthermore the interface of the MCP+ Module for processing your wind data has been improved and the supported map file formats has been expanded to improve map handling.

Request a Demo CD now to explore the features of Version 3.4 for yourself or click here for more information on GH WindFarmer.