Identification

Title

Airborne wind energy: Optimal locations and variability

Abstract

This paper explores the global wind power potential of Airborne Wind Energy (AWE), a relatively new branch of renewable energy that utilizes airborne tethered devices to generate electricity from the wind. Unlike wind turbines mounted on towers, AWE systems can be automatically raised and lowered to the height of maximum wind speeds, thereby providing a more temporally consistent power production. Most locations on Earth have significant power production potential above the height of conventional turbines. The ideal candidates for AWE farms, however, are where temporally consistent and high wind speeds are found at the lowest possible altitudes, to minimize the drag induced by the tether. A criterion is introduced to identify and characterize regions with wind speeds in excess of 10 m s−1 occurring at least 15% of the time in each month for heights below 3000 m AGL. These features exhibit a jet-like profile with remarkable temporal constancy in many locations and are termed here "wind speed maxima" to distinguish them from diurnally varying low-level jets. Their properties are investigated using global, 40 km-resolution, hourly reanalyses from the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Climate Four Dimensional Data Assimilation, performed over the 1985–2005 period. These wind speed maxima are more ubiquitous than previously thought and can have extraordinarily high wind power densities (up to 15,000 W m−2). Three notable examples are the U.S. Great Plains, the oceanic regions near the descending branches of the Hadley cells, and the Somali jet offshore of the horn of Africa. If an intermediate number of AWE systems per unit of land area could be deployed at all locations exhibiting wind speed maxima, without accounting for possible climatic feedbacks or landuse conflicts, then several terawatts of electric power (1 TW = 1012 W) could be generated, more than enough to provide electricity to all of humanity.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d73j3dvw

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2014-04-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact