REMAPPING OF THE WIND ENERGY RESOURCE IN THE MIDWESTERN UNITED STATES

摘要

In the past 2 years, NREL has produced updated wind resource maps of Illinois, North Dakota, and South Dakota at a horizontal resolution of 1 km. This is an improvement over the maps in the 1987 that had a 25-km resolution. As part of developing an understanding of the wind climate in the Midwestern United States, NREL analyzed its available in-house climate data sets including DATSAV2, GUACA, and Reanalysis. We combined the information from the analysis with the terrain data in the computerized wind mapping system to produce these updated maps. The updated maps show more precise patterns of the wind resource and significant variation of the resource across the seemingly flat terrain of the three states. The new, higher resolution maps reveal many pockets of higher wind resource in the three states than those seen on the older maps. The information on the updated maps can be quite helpful in determining where wind farms can be located. The success and popularity of NREL's updated state wind maps have spurred interest in wind energy, leading to increased demand for higher resolution wind resource maps in other areas of the country.