Salient taps Ken Westrick to help bring the world's best weather analytics to the energy sector

Salient, a Boston-based startup that creates the world's most accurate subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) weather forecasts, continues to expand its industry-specific weather analytics solutions with the addition of Kenneth Westrick as head of energy solutions. Westrick is a former founder, CEO, and scientific advisor for numerous firms in the renewable energy, water, and climate risk space. 

"Ken is a world authority in weather and climate analytics for energy," Salient's co-founder and CEO, Matt Stein, commented. "His unique combination of operational knowledge, technical expertise, and financial risk assessment make him the ideal person to lead Salient's efforts that are crucial in the energy sector's continuing shift to renewables."

"Salient has the best 2- to 52-week forecasts in the industry. We're now focusing on value-add solutions that localize our forecasts to the project level, translate weather forecast information to power production or financial metrics, and provide highly relevant visualizations and analytics," Westrick said. "Salient's tools enable everyone—from utilities to power generators and purchasers to the financial industry—to start looking further ahead, ultimately allowing them to make more proactive and efficient operational, financial, risk-based decisions."

With a background in meteorology and hydrology, Westrick has spent much of his career providing weather and climate forecasts to the energy sector. Most recently, he was CEO and founder of Climatics, which provided renewable energy analytics and advisory services to firms throughout the Americas. Ken also co-founded and served as science advisor for REsurety, a leading clean energy risk management company. Ken began his career in the sector over 20 years ago as the founder and CEO of 3TIER, a pioneer in renewable energy forecasting and assessment.

"At Salient, we're helping businesses make more effective decisions that improve the efficiencies of power generation and integration," Westrick continued. "For example, in April we're looking at slightly colder temperatures and slightly wetter conditions than normal in the Pacific Northwest. That's really useful information that can be downscaled through various physical models to provide estimates of power generation at the project level. This,coupled with Salient's highly granular demand forecasts, can reduce much of the uncertainty for long range power forecasting. Better S2S energy forecasts are critical to confidently managing variable renewable energy."

Westrick is excited about Salient's bigger-picture goals as well.

"I'm focusing on the energy side, but the subseasonal-to-seasonal information that's being produced by Salient can empower decisions across many sectors - from water supply to agriculture to supply chain risks - and it's incredible to think about what future products we can develop to help organizations continue their transition to a cleaner and more efficient future."