A Statistical Analysis of Wind Power in the Eastern Interconnect of the United States

This paper describes the emergence of wind generation in the United States and describes the need for wind power data. It identifies the Department of Energy's Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study as a source of consistent, multiyear, geographically diverse, publically available wind power data. It provides a brief description of the wind data and how it was developed and it provides a statistical and graphical analysis of the wind data by State and Region. This paper is a summary of a longer report containing detailed charts, graphs and maps representing a statistical analysis of multi-year hourly wind and load data by State and Region. The complete report can be obtained by emailing the author at jschmidt@midwestiso.org with windstudy in the subject line.