Evaluation of global wind power

The goal of this study is to quantify the world's wind power potential for the first time from data. Wind speeds are calculated at 80 m, the hub height of modern, 77‐m diameter, 1500 kW turbines. Since relatively few observations are available at 80 m, the Least Square extrapolation technique is utilized and revised here to obtain estimates of wind speeds at 80 m given observed wind speeds at 10 m (widely available) and a network of sounding stations. Tower data from the Kennedy Space Center (Florida) were used to validate the results. Globally, ∼13% of all reporting stations experience annual mean wind speeds ≥ 6.9 m/s at 80 m (i.e., wind power class 3 or greater) and can therefore be considered suitable for…