2016 Offshore Wind Energy Resource Assessment for the United States

About: The article was published on 2016-09-01 and is currently open access. It has received 115 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Offshore wind power & Wind power.

Figures

Figure 22. Offshore wind net technical energy potential (7,203 TWh/year) divided by state for water depths of less than 60 m (blue) and greater than 60 m (red) ......................................................... 34 Figure 23. Offshore wind net technical energy potential with an 8-m/s wind speed exclusion by

Figure 8. Offshore wind projects installed and under development as a function of depth and distance to shore. Figure from Smith, Stehly, and Musial (2015) .................................................. 16

Figure 3. Offshore wind resource data (100 m) used for the 2016 offshore Wind resource assessment. Map provided by NREL, AWS Truepower, and Vaisala/3TIER .................................. 9 Figure 4. Weather Research and Forecasting modeling domains for the WIND Toolkit ................... 10 Figure 5. Bathymetry map of contiguous United States and Hawaii showing areas with depths out

Table 1. Wind Turbine Power Curve Inputs

Figure 9. Generic 6-MW power curve for representative wind turbine technology available for commercial deployment in 2015 (assumed operation date of 2017) ............................................. 18 Figure 10. Unit 600-MW wind plant for Openwind energy and wake loss calculations using 7-by-7

Figure 19. Excluded area percentages. Figure provided by NREL, DOE (2015), and Black & Veatch (2010) ................................................................................................................................................... 30 Figure 20. Net capacity factor for technical potential energy resource with technical exclusions for five U.S. offshore wind resource regions. ....................................................................................... 33 Note: The states included in each region are shaded to show which states are in each region. .... 33 Figure 21. Offshore wind resource capacity (left) and net energy (right) gross resource (blue) and

Full text

NREL is a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy
Operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC
This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.
Contract No. DE-AC36-08GO28308
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
15013 Denver West Parkway
Golden, CO 80401
303-275-3000 • www.nrel.gov
Technical Report
NREL/TP-5000-66599
September 2016
2016 Offshore Wind Energy
Resource Assessment for the
United States
Walt Musial, Donna Heimiller, Philipp Beiter,
George Scott, and Caroline Draxl
National Renewable Energy Laboratory

NREL is a national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy
Operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC
This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.
Contract No. DE-AC36-08GO28308
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
15013 Denver West Parkway
Golden, CO 80401
303-275-3000 • www.nrel.gov
2016 Offshore Wind Energy
Resource Assessment for the
United States
Walt Musial, Donna Heimiller, Philipp Beiter,
George Scott, and Caroline Draxl
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Prepared under Task No. WE15.5C01
Technical Report
NREL/TP-5000-66599
September 2016

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This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under Contract No. DE-
AC36-08GO28308 with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Funding for the
work was provided by the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Wind and
Water Power Technologies Office. The authors would like to extend thanks to NREL technical
staff who contributed to this study including Dylan Hettinger as well as Aaron Smith (now with
Principle Power Inc.). We would like to thank the DOE Wind and Water Power Technologies
Office staff and contractors including Alana Duerr, Patrick Gilman, Ben Maurer, and Jose Zayas
for supporting this research and providing feedback throughout the process. Thanks also to Greg
Matzat (New York State Energy Research and Development Agency) for his guidance at the
early stages of this study. NREL would also like to thank the following peer reviewers and other
contributors: Bruce Bailey (AWS Truepower, LLC), Chris Ziesler (AWS Truepower, LLC),
Matt Filippelli (AWS Truepower, LLC), Darryl Francois (Bureau of Ocean Energy
Management), and Bill White (Massachusetts Clean Energy Center). Technical editing was
provided by Sheri Anstedt, Corrie Christol, and Tiffany Byrne.

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This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.
Nomenclature or List of Acronyms
AEP annual energy production
AWST AWS Truepower
BOEM Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
DOE U.S. Department of Energy
DOI U.S. Department of the Interior
EEZ Exclusive Economic Zone
EIA Energy Information Administration
GCF gross capacity factor
GIS geographic information system
GW gigawatt
GWh/yr gigawatt-hour per year
LCOE levelized cost of energy
m meter
MERRA Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis
m/s meters per second
MW megawatt
MW/km
2
megawatt per square kilometer
nm nautical mile
NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
NREL National Renewable Energy Laboratory
OCS Outer Continental Shelf
ReEDS Regional Energy Deployment System
SLA Submerged Lands Act
TW terawatt
TWh/yr terawatt-hours per year
WIND Toolkit Wind Integration National Dataset Toolkit
WRF Weather Research and Forecasting

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What is the assessment of availability for offshore sites?

The assessment of availability for offshore sites is highly dependent on meteorological ocean conditions, availability of service equipment, and the maturity of the land-based infrastructure. 

Q2. How many nm of wind speed data were used to characterize the domain in Hawaii?

Vaisala/3Tier data, at a 90-m height above the surface were extrapolated to 100 m assuming a power law wind shear of 1/7, and were used to characterize the domain in Hawaii from 12 nm11 

Q3. What is the net technical energy potential of the southern states?

These southern states tend to have a high quantity of resource at low wind speeds between 7 m/s and 8 m/s, and net capacity factors are less than 35%. 

Q4. What is the reason for the unusual behavior of the turbine?

This unusual behavior is attributed to variability in Weibull k factors that tended to lower the energy production for the generic turbine at many West Coast sites. 

Q5. What is the importance of understanding the bathymetry of the entire Outer Continental Shelf?

6.2 Bathymetry Data Understanding the bathymetry of the entire Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) was essential to developing this resource assessment. 

Q6. How was the percentage of the remaining area determined?

The competing-use and environmental exclusions were applied by eliminating a percentage of the remaining area based on analysis performed by Black & Veatch and NREL as a function of distance to shore. 

Q7. What is the cost of going deeper water with floating wind technology?

NREL cost models indicate that there will be some economic penalty in going to deeper water with floating wind technology but the cost relative to depth is mostly caused by increased mooring line and electric cable length, and greater distances for service crews to travel because deeper waters tend to be farther from shore. 

Q8. How many regions have the resources to contribute to a viable offshore wind industry?

Each region shown in Figure 20 has the resource supply to contribute substantially to a viable offshore wind industry through deployment to serve its local and regional energy needs, as well the potential to participate in a robust manufacturing supply chain with supporting coastal infrastructure for marine construction and service operations. 

Q9. What are the technical limits of offshore wind?

It takes into account technical limits of offshore wind, including system performance and loss criteria, conflicting use and environmental constraints, and technology limits. 

Q10. How was the gross energy potential calculated?

The gross offshore energy potential for a unit area was calculated using the following equation:Gross Offshore Energy = Array Power Density x Gross Capacity Factor x 8760 hours per year (1)The array power density was set to 3 MW/km2 as described earlier. 

Q11. How much of the total technical resource potential area is used?

This scenario would require the United States to use only 0.8% of the gross resource area, or about 4.2% of the total technical resource potential area. 

Q12. How many TWh/year of net technical energy is available at no cost?

This report is available at no cost from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at www.nrel.gov/publications.technical resource of over 1,000 TWh/year, whereas several states with lower wind speeds show virtually no net technical resource potential above 8 m/s.