It’s a pretty small acquisition but I was interested to see Finland based Vaisala, a company focused on industrial and environmental measurement, pick up 3TIER, a company that provides renewable energy assessments and forecasting services. 3Tier’s services include things like pinpointing the best project locations for hydro, wind, and solar as well as forecasting in energy markets to better plan capacity commitments.

Vaisala has built its business around providing highly reliable weather measurements for environments ranging from airports to ensure safe decisions to industrial processes relating to the life sciences. The acquisition should give Vaisala access to the wind market and potentially hydro and solar. As renewable energy deployment grows, more sophisticated environmental measurements will have value to project developers who are trying to zero in on the best locations, times and environments within which to capture renewables. I also think the forecasting capabilities could become important as project developers work with utilities to figure out when energy must be stored and when it’ll be available from renewable sources. All that data will have an impact for utilities and ISOs in terms of managing capacity and pricing in energy markets.