United States Wind Resources and Transmission Lines map

A wind atlas contains data on the

wind speed In meteorology, wind speed, or wind flow speed, is a fundamental atmospheric quantity caused by air moving from high to low pressure, usually due to changes in temperature. Wind speed is now commonly measured with an anemometer. Wind speed ...

and

wind direction Wind direction is generally reported by the direction from which it originates. For example, a ''north'' or ''northerly'' wind blows from the north to the south. The exceptions are onshore winds (blowing onto the shore from the water) and offsho ...

in a region. These data include

map A map is a symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, or themes. Many maps are static, fixed to paper or some other durable medium, while others are dynamic or interactive. Although ...

s, but also

time series In mathematics, a time series is a series of data points indexed (or listed or graphed) in time order. Most commonly, a time series is a sequence taken at successive equally spaced points in time. Thus it is a sequence of discrete-time data. Exa ...

frequency distribution In statistics, the frequency (or absolute frequency) of an event i is the number n_i of times the observation has occurred/recorded in an experiment or study. These frequencies are often depicted graphically or in tabular form. Types The cumula ...

s. A

climatological Climatology (from Greek , ''klima'', "place, zone"; and , '' -logia'') or climate science is the scientific study of Earth's climate, typically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of at least 30 years. This modern field of stud ...

wind atlas covers hourly averages at a standard height (10 meters) over even longer periods (30 years) but depending on the application there are variations in averaging time, height and period.

Application

A wind atlas is employed when pre-selecting

wind farm A wind farm or wind park, also called a wind power station or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used Wind power, to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundre ...

sites. The required data includes 10-minute averaged wind at heights between 30 and 100 meters over a 10 to 20-year period.

History

Using wind for

energy In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of heat a ...

is an idea first brought about by James Blyth, who is believed to have made the first wind turbine in Scotland in 1887. In the United States Charles Bush developed the first wind turbine in

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

a year later. Global_Annual_50m_Average_Wind_Speed

The first well-known wind atlas was the European Wind Atlas, published in 1989. Russia published a wind atlas in 2000, followed by Egypt in 2006. A global wind atlas was then made in order to help as many countries as possible.

Examples

At least one wind atlas covers the globe, and other wind atlases cover the

EU12 This is a sequence of tables giving statistical data for past and future enlargements of the European Union. All data refer to the populations, land areas, and gross domestic products (GDP) of the respective countries at the time of their acc ...

countries and the

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

an offshore regions. Wind atlases have also been compiled for many countries or regions.

References

External links

Overview of wind atlases and wind surveys

Global Wind Atlas

World-wide wind atlas

North Sea and Baltic

Evaluation of global windpower

Finnish Wind Atlas (Finnish Meteorological Institute)

Dutch part of the North Sea

Netherlands, 100 meter

Atlases Wind power {{windpower-stub