Metadata Report
| Title: | Assessment of Offshore Wind Energy Resources for the United States | |||||||||||||||||
| Source: | National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) | |||||||||||||||||
| URL or Email: | http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy10osti/45889.pdf | |||||||||||||||||
| Author(s): | Schwartz, Marc
Heimiller, Donna Haymes, Steve Musial, Walt |
|||||||||||||||||
| Resource Type: | Publications - Government Reports | |||||||||||||||||
| Status: | Final | |||||||||||||||||
| Access Restrictions: | Public | |||||||||||||||||
| Data Center URL: | http://www.nrel.gov/ | |||||||||||||||||
| Download Data Sets: |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| Abstract: | This report summarizes the offshore wind resource potential, based on map estimates, for the contiguous United States and Hawaii, as of May 2009. The development of this assessment has evolved over multiple stages as new regional meso-scale assessments became available, new validation data were obtained, and better modeling capabilities were implemented. It is expected that further updates to the current assessment will be made in future reports.Offshore wind energy development promises to be a significant domestic renewable energy source, especially for coastal energy loads with limited access to interstate grid transmission. The definition of the magnitude and distribution of this resource required the development of a standard and flexible database. Developed using Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques, the database includes offshore wind resource characteristics such as wind speed, water depth, and distance from shore. It combines the resource characteristics with state administrative areas and quantifies the resource for several scenarios. In the future, the database may be expanded to include other important characteristics such as wave power density, extreme wind and wave, ocean currents, and a number of other parameters important to the design of offshore wind turbines. (June 2010) | |||||||||||||||||
| Site Information: |
|
|||||||||||||||||
