NASA Research Identifies Areas Suitable For Offshore Wind Farms

Tuesday, December 23, 2008 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer
Tags: wind farms, health news, Natural News

(NaturalNews) Researchers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., have used global satellite maps to identify the locations on earth that are most suitable for the placement of offshore wind farms, according to paper published in Geophysical Research Letters.

The researchers used seven years of data from the QuikSCAT satellite, which was launched in 1999 and has been continuously collecting information on the direction, speed and power of ocean surface winds ever since.

To date, the QuikSCAT data have been used to predict storms and other weather events, but now researchers have developed a new use. By looking for the places on earth were winds blow strongest, the study authors hope to make wind power a more viable major energy source.

Winds tend to be stronger over the ocean than over land, because there is substantially less topography to slow them through friction. The energy industry also anticipates less environmental opposition to wind farms that are placed in the ocean, as the noise from onshore wind farms has been shown to disturb sensitive wildlife.

JPL Chief Technologist Paul Dimotakis estimates that ocean wind farms could generate between 500 and 800 watts of electricity per square meter. Although this is less than the energy produced by solar panels, Dimotakis says that wind power can be produced more cheaply. Strategic deployment of offshore wind plants could allow up to 15 percent of the world's energy consumption to be met from wind power, he said.

Some of the favorable locations identified by the research team include areas off the coasts of Northern California, Tasmania, New Zealand, and South America's Tierra del Fuego. In all of these regions, strong, high-speed winds blow almost continuously. Also suitable would be certain areas in the middle latitudes of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans that are regularly hit by powerful winter storms.

Sources for this story include: www.upi.com.v