Traverse Technologies

Traverse Technologies provides software and engineering services for wind farm development, aiming to raise the equity IRR of greenfield wind projects. Its stated approach is to enumerate very large numbers of project permutations — hundreds of thousands of turbine/energy layouts and millions of road and inter-array cable configurations — and evaluate them directly against internal rate of return (IRR) and levelised cost of energy (LCOE) rather than energy yield alone. Alongside standard energy assessment, the company performs electrical and civil balance-of-plant cost estimation early in project development, comparable in intent to an EPC contractor's quotation process.

The company's offering spans four stages of the development cycle: Prospect (preliminary feasibility screening of large areas), Measure (planning and budgeting of measurement campaigns), Monitor (quality assurance of campaign measurements) and Predict (layout optimization and energy, cost and IRR assessment), described as end-to-end coverage from prospecting to financial close. Products named on the website include WindDesk Discover, a browser-based free tool for prospecting wind farm sites, and WindDesk Monitor. Supporting resources include sample reports, published methodology and case studies on large-area prospecting, energy optimization and road optimization.

Business model

Traverse combines proprietary optimization software with owners'-engineer style advisory work for wind project developers. The company states it does not bill hourly or negotiate scope, instead offering unlimited revisions and end-to-end reworks without variation orders as development issues arise or new data becomes available. Free software tools (WindDesk Discover, WindDesk Monitor) are offered alongside the paid engagement model.

Paid engineering and optimization engagements for wind project development, explicitly positioned as not charged on a $/hour basis and without variation orders; certain WindDesk tools are offered free of charge.

Traction

The website reports a track record of more than 7 GW of experience, broken down as 4,000 MW of energy assessments, 2,050 MW of prospecting, 900 MW of feasibility studies and 900 MW of due diligence. WindDesk Discover was made available globally in September 2021.

Latest developments

The most recent publicly dated activity on the company's site is a series of product posts in August and September 2021, including the global release of WindDesk Discover and case studies on inter-array cable and access road optimization; the site carries a 2023 copyright notice.