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CA Offshore Wind Energy |
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California Offshore Wind Speed, Monthly & Hourly Average Animations

California Offshore Wind Speed, Monthly & Hourly Average Animations

May 22, 2017 (Last modified May 25, 2017)

Created by Conservation Biology Institute

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Description: This animation shows the monthly and hourly average wind speeds off California throughout the year (for the time period 2007-2013).

These data were post-processed from point data for BOEM Aliquots to a gridded NetCDF file for time-series display. The monthly/hourly averages were extracted and are represented in the animation by the middle-year of the data acquisition range (e.g., January 1, 2010 represents an average for January 2007-2013).

Original Data Source:
The WIND Toolkit, which was developed by NREL, is an update and expansion of previously available wind datasets, and is intended to support the next generation of wind integration studies. The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model version 3.4.1 was used to create an underlying meteorological dataset, using re-analysis weather data as inputs. The meteorological dataset has a spatial resolution of 2x2 km and 5 min temporal resolution. It covers 7 years (2007–2013) and is available for the outer continental shelf (OCS) over the contiguous 48 U.S. states. Unlike the hybrid dataset used on the initial Pacific geodatabase, the WIND Toolkit is a spatially and temporally consistent data set that is well suited to describe the wind resource off the US coast. It is freely available, and has the advantages of being reproducible, extendable geographically and in time, and its creation is fully documented.
The WIND Toolkit has been used by various research centers worldwide, within NREL, and by universities in multiple studies. A validation report is available for 6 onshore sites and 3 offshore sites (Draxl, Hodge, Clifton, 2015). A validation study and gaps analysis for the WIND Toolkit for offshore waters is planned by DOE in FY 2017.