Wind resource assessment

Wind resource assessment is the process by which wind power developers estimate the future energy production of a wind farm. Accurate wind resource assessments are crucial to the successful development of wind farms.

Modern wind resource assessments have been conducted since the first wind farms were developed in the late 1970s. The methods used were pioneered by developers and researchers in Denmark, where the modern wind power industry first developed.

Government agencies in some countries publish maps (commonly collected together as a national 'wind atlas') of estimated wind resources, which serve to inform policy-making and encourage wind power development. Examples include the Canadian Wind Atlas, the European Wind Atlas, and the Wind Resource Atlas of the United States. Recognizing the lack of knowledge of wind (and solar) resource potential in developing countries, the Solar and Wind Energy Resource Assessment (SWERA) project was initiated by the United Nations Environment Program in 2002, with funding from the Global Environment Facility, to carry out initial mapping using only satellite-based data. More recently the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP), a program within the World Bank, has launched an initiative to map wind and other renewable energy resources in a number of developing countries, with the intention of developing high quality mapping outputs (and associated datasets) that are validated with specially commissioned ground-based data. There is also an ongoing effort by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) to create a Global Atlas for Renewable Energy, which brings together publicly available GIS data on wind and other renewable energy resources.

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