DTU Launches Global Wind Atlas 3.0

DTU Wind Energy has launched Global Wind Atlas (GWA) version 3.0, a free web-based application containing new data about wind resources worldwide.

According to DTU, GWA 3.0 continues to help policymakers, planners and investors identify global, national, regional and local high-wind areas for wind power generation.

For this latest atlas, Vortex was commissioned by ESMAP to carry out 10 years of mesoscale model simulations covering the globe at 3km resolution, which DTU used to carry out microscale model calculations at a 250m grid spacing.

To provide additional information on offshore wind resources, DTU said the calculations have been expanded up to 200km from the shoreline.

Also, two additional heights were included, so that GWA 3.0 includes wind resource data at 10, 50, 100, 150 and 200m above ground/sea level. It is now also possible to download GIS files for all layers, for any area of interest.

Furthermore, DTU and Nazka Mapps introduced two new features in the user interface, the first of which is an energy yield calculator tool, which allows users to specify a custom wind turbine to create downloadable GIS data for annual energy production, capacity factor, or full load hours.

The second feature focuses on the temporal aspect of the wind resource, displaying the mean wind speed by year, month, and hour.

GWA 3.0 can be accessed free of charge HERE.