Integration of Climatic Data Sets for Wind Resource Assessment

One barrier to wind energy development, in many regions of the world, is the lack of reliable information about the spacial distribution of the wind energy resource. The goal of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Wind Energy Program's wind resource assessment group, located at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, is to improve the characterization of the windresource in many of these regions in support of U.S. wind energy industry (Elliott and Schwartz, 1996). NREL provides wind resource assessments for our clients in the form of reports, atlases, and wind resource maps. The assessments estimate the level of the wind resource, at wind turbine hub heights (typically 30 m to 50 m above ground level), for locations exposed to the prevailing winds.