Home wind power wind map4/9/2023 But is there enough wind speed available for these large wind turbines to generate power.īack in the day the wind’s energy was only used to power sailing boats or drive windmills for irrigation and milling, but today through advancements in modern turbine and generator technology we can now use the wind’s energy to help power whole towns and even our home. The use of wind energy has come along way over the last few decades or so, and most of us have seen many wind turbines arranged together both on-land and off-shore, which are known as “wind farms”, to capture large amount of power at once and feed it directly into the national grid. JPL manages QuikSCAT for NASA.Wind Speed Wind Speed – Is There Enough Wind Where You Live Scientists use the QuikSCAT data to examine how ocean winds affect weather and climate, by driving ocean currents, mixing ocean waters, and affecting the carbon, heat and water interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere. The new QuikSCAT maps, which add to previous generations of QuikSCAT wind atlases, also will be beneficial to the shipping industry by highlighting areas of the ocean where high winds could be hazardous to ships, allowing them to steer clear of these areas. Areas with large-scale, high wind power potential also can be found in regions of the mid-latitudes of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, where winter storms normally track. Similar jets are formed from westerly winds blowing around Tasmania, New Zealand, and Tierra del Fuego in South America, among other locations. The protruding land mass of the cape deflects northerly winds along the California coast, creating a local wind jet that blows year-round. The new research identifies such areas and offers explanations for the physical mechanisms that produce the high winds.Īn example of one such high-wind mechanism is located off the coast of Northern California near Cape Mendocino. Ideally, offshore wind farms should be located in areas where winds blow continuously at high speeds. Also, winds are generally stronger over the ocean than on land because there is less friction over water to slow the winds down - there are no hills or mountains to block the wind's path. Ocean wind farms have less environmental impact than onshore wind farms, whose noise tends to disturb sensitive wildlife in their immediate area. A number of wind farms are already in operation worldwide. Dimotakis notes that while this is slightly less than solar energy (which generates about one kilowatt of energy per square meter), wind power can be converted to electricity more efficiently than solar energy and at a lower cost per watt of electricity produced.Īccording to Liu, new technology has made floating wind farms in the open ocean possible. If ocean areas with high winds were tapped for wind energy, they could potentially generate 500 to 800 watts of energy per square meter, according to Liu's research. Wind energy has the potential to provide 10 to 15 percent of future world energy requirements, according to Paul Dimotakis, chief technologist at JPL. Data from QuikSCAT, collected continuously by a specialized microwave radar instrument named SeaWinds, also are used to predict storms and enhance the accuracy of weather forecasts. QuikSCAT, launched in 1999, tracks the speed, direction and power of winds near the ocean surface. "Like solar power, wind energy is green energy." After the initial energy investment to build and install wind turbines, you don't burn fossil fuels that emit carbon," said study lead author Tim Liu, a senior research scientist and QuikSCAT science team leader at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Wind energy is environmentally friendly. The research, published this week in Geophysical Research Letters, was funded by NASA's Earth Science Division, which works to advance the frontiers of scientific discovery about Earth, its climate and its future. The new maps have many potential uses including planning the location of offshore wind farms to convert wind energy into electric energy. Scientists have been creating maps using nearly a decade of data from NASA's QuikSCAT satellite that reveal ocean areas where winds could produce wind energy. WASHINGTON - Efforts to harness the energy potential of Earth's ocean winds could soon gain an important new tool: global satellite maps from NASA.
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