The World Bank and the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) today launched new Global Wind Atlas during the Wind-Europe conference and exhibition in Amsterdam
A free web-based tool that could help policymakers and investors identify promising areas for wind power generation, virtually anywhere in the world.
The Global Wind Atlas is expected to help governments save millions of dollars by avoiding the need for early-stage, national-level wind mapping.
It will also provide commercial developers with an easily accessible platform to compare resource potential between areas in one region or across countries.
The new tool is based on the latest modeling technologies, which combine wind climate data with high-resolution terrain information—factors that can influence the wind, such as hills or valleys—and provides wind climate data at a 1km scale.
This yields more reliable information on wind potential. The tool also provides access to high-resolution global and regional maps and geographic information system (GIS) data, enabling users to print poster maps and utilize the data in other applications. The Global Wind Atlas was unveiled at the Wind Europe Conference in Amsterdam, following the successful launch of the Global Solar Atlas earlier in the year.