“I do wind energy forecasting,” says Kristin Larson, one of the 3TIER power prognosticators. What Kristin likes most about her job is that “there’s always new weather, always ways to do better forecasts,” she says. “I like making the customers happy.”

Most of our forecast clients are power operators who rely on us to help them prepare for the inherent intermittency of wind. In other words, while power companies are expected to keep the lights on no matter what, the wind doesn’t always blow. Fortunately for me, surfing the internet on my front porch on a calm day, wind isn’t the only power generator in a utility company’s mix: If the wind is down, they will switch to another source of energy. For lots of reasons, not the least of which is preserving expensive fossil fuel if they can, utilities like to know with some precision when they can rely on wind, and when they can’t.

Short of ensuring constant winds — which we’re pretty sure Kristin, despite her superpowers, cannot do — Kristin makes customers happy by providing accurate predictions. “We tell clients how much power they will get from their wind farms over the next couple of hours to a week,” Kristin says.
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