Bill Esterday has more than 20 years of consulting experience in wind engineering related to design wind speeds and reliability, snow climatology, and transmission line design and rating methods. He holds a PE license in several states (CO, FL, NE, and NV).
Bill is an integral part of site-study services team, which works extensively with climate data worldwide. This team provides project-specific wind climate analysis that defines wind-speed risk and site vulnerability for solar farms, LNG facilities, buildings, stadiums, and other structures. Additional site-specific parameters replace code-prescribed velocity pressure coefficients that are typically conservative and include directional terrain and exposure analysis, topographic coefficients, and climate specific air density reductions. Bill has led these studies for projects governed by the ASCE 7 standard, National Building Code of Canada, Australian/New Zealand Standard, Eurocode, and other code documents as required by local municipality, country, or region.
Snow climate studies are also a significant portion of work in the site-study services group. Bill developed tools and techniques to evaluate the ground snow load, both in case study regions and other regions, to support site-specific reductions to the ASCE 7 ground snow map. Site-study services can also include lower companion load factors by project location compared to the code-prescribed load combination factors.
Since 2000, Bill has selected suitable site locations for weather observing stations and performed meteorological data analysis in support of transmission line rating methods, per the requirements of CIGRE document number 299, Guide for Selection of Weather Parameters for Bare Overhead Conductor Ratings. CPP co-developed an industry-leading transmission line rating methodology that applies historical meteorological data for the lines/areas in question coupled with detailed application of the physics that control conductor temperature through a Monte Carlo statistical sampling process.
Bill’s additional transmission line expertise includes risk assessment of ice storms and extreme ice thickness by elevation, wind speed-up factors over complex topography, site-specific temperature lapse rates to provide accurate estimates of temperature by elevation, contoured temperature isotherms by mean recurrence interval, and high-intensity wind probabilities for wind loading design.
