Mapping the Frontier of New Wind Power Potential

Maps can help you project a road trip, explore new places, or even find buried treasure. But there's another kind of map that can help chart the path to a more sustainable future and unlock the potential for wind energy development. The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), together with the Energy Department's Wind Plan and AWS Truepower, has released maps that illustrate the potential for wind energy development using new wind turbine technologies.

Wind industry professionals use wind resource maps in the early stages of wind farm plan planning to understand the potential for wind development in a particular region and to see where more in-depth location evaluation might be justified for various types of turbines.

The Energy Department previously released maps that gauge average wind speeds at 80 and 100 meters (262 and 328 feet) above the ground. The new maps released by NREL recently build on these wind speed data to identify areas throughout the country that have an average wind energy capacity factor greater than 35%. (Wind energy capacity factor is a measure of power plant productivity that indicates how much electricity a wind farm actually produces relative to the maximum it could potentially produce at continuous full-power operation over a specific time period.) For the complete story, see the EERE Blog.

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