BrightWind has announced that it has doubled its workforce and taken on five new team members to meet the increase in demand for its renewable energy consultancy services.

BrightWind, founded in 2015 by Shane Martin and Stephen Holleran, has a core expertise in wind resource assessment, and is headquartered at NovaUCD, the Centre for New Ventures and Entrepreneurs at University College Dublin.

Open-source analysis Python library

Earlier this year BrightWind secured more than €160,000 in funding from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland to develop a new cloud platform to help better understand Ireland’s wind and solar resource data, and to build an open-source analysis Python library to enable easy processing of such data.

The newly appointed staff members will be supporting BrightWind’s current team to further develop this platform and Python library, to enable the company to process and manage data more efficiently to enhance the energy insights provided to customers.

In addition, the new staff members will be supporting BrightWind’s day-to-day consultancy work.

Shane Martin, co-founder and director, BrightWind, said: “The last few months have been extremely busy, dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and transitioning the entire BrightWind team to remote working.

"During this time we have continued to expand and grow our team to meet the increase in demand for our energy consultancy services from existing and new clients.

"We are delighted to welcome five new members to the team and we look forward to now all working together to meet the needs of our customers while continuing to grow the company.”

Extensive experience in wind industry

The new BrightWind team members are: Bianca Morandi, a senior analyst from the tidal industry who has hands on experience with a range of data monitoring and instrumentation technologies; Conor Coady, an independent consultant with extensive experience in the wind industry, having previously worked with DNV-GL, ESB and GE, and Gelmis Bartulis who has extensive software development expertise. In addition, Ilir McGill and Shweta Joshi will be joining BrightWind as data analyst and software developer interns.

Stephen Holleran, co-founder and director, BrightWind, said: “The government’s Climate Action Plan has set an ambitious target of 70% of electricity generation to come from renewable sources by 2030. Our open wind and solar data platform will help to meet this target by contributing to research by our clients in wind power forecasting.

“Such forecasting will enable higher penetration of wind on the electricity system and to help to reduce the uncertainty in long-term energy yield predictions of wind farms. By expanding our team our goal is to process and manage wind and solar data more efficiently and to enhance the energy insights we provide to our customers.”