Study Maps Best Places for Turbines
Posted May 18, 2005 5:54PM
According to the study, global locations with Class 3 winds could produce about 72 terawatts of electricity. A terawatt is 1 billion watts, and the world's global electricity usage totaled about 1.7 terawatts in 2000.
With help from NASA , Stanford University scientists have created a map to estimate wind speeds around the globe to help figure out the best place to generate wind power.
The study, conducted by Cristina Archer and Mark Jacobson, will be published in the May issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.
The researchers looked at wind speed measurements from about 8,000 stations -- 7,500 on the earth's surface and 5,000 elevated stations at 300 feet above the surface, to simulate the conditions of wind turbines in those areas.
The best conditions, according to the map, are in Northern Europe, the southern tip of South America and the Australian island of Tasmania. In the United States, the best locations are along both coastlines and in the Great Lakes region.
Experts consider wind power generation to be feasible only if winds reach 6.9 meters per second, which is about 15 miles per hour. The Stanford study said nearly every region of the world has areas with "Class 3" wind power, which means sustained wind speeds of 80 meters per second.
According to the study, global locations with Class 3 winds could produce about 72 terawatts of electricity. A terawatt is 1 billion watts, and the world's global electricity usage totaled about 1.7 terawatts in 2000.
"The main implication of this study is that wind, for low-cost wind energy, is more widely available than was previously recognized," Archer said. "The methodology in the paper can be utilized for several applications, such as determining elevated wind speeds in remote areas or to evaluate the benefits of distributed wind power."
© 2005 Environment and Energy Daily.
© 2005 Sci-Tech Today.
