MAPPING OF THE GLOBAL WIND ENERGY POTENTIAL USING OPEN SOURCE GIS DATA

The request of new energy sources and the need of reduction of CO2 emission in order to mitigate the global waiming have driven the deployment of renewable energy sources, among which wind has played in the last ten years the role of major contributor. In this research the global wind energy potential at national scale is assessed using geographic infounation systems (GIS). The global data of land use, topography and administrative boundaries in GIS format and wind speed measurements of around 12'000 worldwide surface stations have been collected. The punctual wind measurements at 10m high of the surface stations have been used to derive a worldwide wind map at 50m, 80m and 130m high using a co-Kriging method. The validation process shows an average value of the uncertainty of 1.1m/s and the spatial distribution of the uncertainties has been mapped. The theoretical, geographical and technical potential of each country have been estimated. The global technical potential at 130m high is around 400 PWh/year considering a power density of 5MW/km(2) which is around 20 times the global electricity consumption of 19.3 PWh in 2011.