Public testing phase — feedback, real inputs and validation cases

[VelantisWind]

Hi everyone,

VelantisWind has been released as an experimental open-source QGIS plugin for early-stage wind farm assessment.

I would like to use this discussion as an open space to collect feedback, real workflow inputs and validation cases from users, beta testers and wind energy professionals.

At this stage, the main objective is not to define the full long-term roadmap yet. The priority is to improve and validate the three current modules until they are clearly usable in real technical workflows:

• Energy assessment
• Noise assessment
• Shadow flicker assessment

The idea is to collect real feedback and validation inputs over the coming months, ideally until September, before preparing the plugin for submission to the official QGIS plugin repository.

What kind of feedback would be useful?

Any feedback is welcome, but I am especially interested in understanding how VelantisWind could better fit into real wind energy workflows.

Some useful topics could be:

• Installation issues in different QGIS / Python environments
• Missing input formats
• Parts of the workflow that are unclear or too manual
• Outputs that are useful or missing
• Comparison against WAsP, WindPRO, OpenWind or internal company tools
• Gross AEP and net AEP validation results
• Wake model behaviour
• Practical limitations of the current modules

Energy assessment

For the energy module, it would be very valuable to receive comments about real input data structures and validation cases.

Examples of useful feedback:

• Wind resource grid formats normally used in real projects
• Turbine layout import/export needs
• Power curve and thrust curve handling
• Turbulence intensity inputs
• Wake model configuration
• Gross and net AEP comparison against other tools
• Cases where the results are difficult to interpret or do not match expectations

Noise assessment

For the noise module, I am especially interested in improving how turbine acoustic data is handled.

Useful inputs could include:

• Real examples of turbine sound power data
• Octave-band sound power curves
• How acoustic data is normally provided by manufacturers
• Missing assumptions or correction factors
• Expected report outputs
• Comparison with existing acoustic assessment workflows

The goal is to make the noise workflow more practical and closer to how acoustic inputs are used in real projects.

Shadow flicker assessment

For the shadow flicker module, feedback is welcome on how to make the results more realistic and useful in practice.

Some possible topics:

• Vegetation screening
• Terrain or obstacle screening
• Cloudiness correction
• Sunshine probability
• Receptor definition
• Regulatory limits or expected reporting formats
• Differences between theoretical and realistic shadow flicker results

Sharing real inputs or validation data

If you have real inputs, validation cases or examples that cannot be shared publicly in this discussion, you can also contact me by email:

[info@velantiswind.com](mailto:info@velantiswind.com)

Any data shared privately would only be used to better understand real workflows, improve the plugin and validate the modules.

Current objective

The current focus is to make the existing three modules more robust, understandable and useful for real workflows.

Once this first validation phase is more mature, I will open a separate discussion about the future roadmap of VelantisWind.

Future topics could include additional wind resource workflows, logistics, CAPEX, solar integration, financial metrics or other modules that could add value to the VelantisWind ecosystem.

Thanks for testing, commenting and helping improve open-source wind energy workflows inside QGIS.

Cesar