Wind Resource Assessment Conference North America

Joerg Winterfeldt, Senior Micrositing Engineer, GE

Joerg is Senior Engineer in the Micrositing department at GE. He is the author of the GE design practice for wind resource assessment (WRA) and led the development of GE’s extreme wind estimation and meso-scale weather modeling platforms. He brings 15 years of working experience in the wind energy industry and in wind meteorology having worked for a developer, a research institute and a manufacturer: Before joining GE in 2009 Joerg researched wind and cyclones in the North-Atlantic climate system in the Coastal Climate group at the GKSS Research Centre for five years and served as a micrositing expert for the German based developer Overspeed. Joerg was awarded a Ph.D. in Meteorology from the University of Hamburg in 2008 as well as a Master of Science degree in both Engineering Science and Environmental Sciences from the University of Oldenburg in Germany. Joerg is a member of the IEC 61400-15 WRA standard committee and AWEA WRA working group.

Chad Ringley, Energy Analytics Director, Pattern Energy

Chad Ringley is the Director of Energy Analytics for Pattern Energy Group LP. He designed and operates Pattern’s high performance computing center, which uses numerical weather prediction models to provide specialized products ranging from site prospecting to asset management, including wind and power forecasts for Pattern’s fleet. He has a wide range of duties including power market analysis and scheduling, asset performance and monitoring, wind and solar resource assessment, site design, and data visualization. Chad has 8 years of industry experience and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Meteorology from the University of Oklahoma and a Masters of Science in Atmospheric Sciences from North Carolina State University.

Jason Fields, Wind Applications Engineer, NREL 

Jason Fields is a wind energy engineer with experience on over 2,000 MW of wind project development activities spanning multiple continents. He specializes in early stage development, particularly wind resource assessment and risk analysis. After spending several years in the private sector with Black & Veatch, he is now a member of the NWTC staff. His research interests are instrumentation, mesoscale-microscale coupling, uncertainty analysis and risk assessment. Jason is also the U.S representative on several international research and standards tasks through the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the International Electro-technical Committee (IEC).