Data Collection
My data collection process began with the aid of Owen Hertzman, Climatology professor at SFU. Using his expertise and access to climate data, he helped me choose the proper weather maps and information used. He directed me to download Surface Wind Speed maps from the UBC Atmospheric Science Program, found at weather.eos.ubc.ca/wxfcst. This information was created by Roland Stull using UBC weather stations throughout BC. I chose to use a 1.3 km grid that displays surface wind speed by colour. Maps were downloaded throughout November to gain an idea of a typical week in Autumn in south west BC.
After gathering sufficient weather data, a raster file was needed to overlay it onto. A GVRD dem file was found that included topographic features, most importantly slope. This file was used to create a slope raster file, and a contour interval vector file. These layers will help show the relationship of the wind data to topographic features in the GVRD. The GVRD Dem was created from a BC Dem found in the following folder on the SFU SIS Server: S:\355-Data\Labs\Lab2. No further information regarding this layers background was found in the metadata.
A GVRD_Landuse vector layer was used to distinguish between residential, commercial, agricultural, and open/undeveloped land areas. This layer was also found on the SFU SIS server in the Data Warehouse at: S:\Data Warehouse\GVRD Landuse\gvrd_2001_landuse.shp. No further information regarding this layers background was found in the metadata.
The background and technical information regarding small wind turbines was found at the Canadian Wind Energy Association in a paper titled "Small Wind Siting and Zoning Study," from April 2006, written by Heather Rhoads-Weaver et al.
Information regarding the specific wind turbines was found at http://www.aerostarwind.com/ and at http://www.abundantre.com/ARE_Wind_Turbines.htm