The latest analysis of US wind energy reserves show a threefold increase in potential wind power since the last measurement 17 years ago.

 

The massive increase is a result of much more accurate measurement rather than a change in the environment,and suggests that the potential wind power worldwide is much greater than currently understood.

 

Using current wind power systems, the US could generate 37 million gigawatt-hours (GWh )of electricity per year, Wired.com reports, quoting a study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and consulting firm AWS Truewind.

 

In the last comprehensive survey in 1993, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory estimated the US wind energy potential to be 10.7 million GWh. Currently, Americans consume around 3 million GWh of electricity, of which wind turbines generated just 52,000 GWh in 2008.

 

The big change in wind technologies since the previous survey is the height of the turbines.

 

“Wind speed generally increases with height, and most wind turbines are taller than they used to be, standing at about 250 feet (80 meters) instead of 165 feet (50 meters). Turbines are now larger, more powerful and better than the old designs that were used to calculate previous estimates,” Wired said.

 

The improvement in being able to measure and calculate wind data came with the availability of cheap computing power in the late 1990s, enabling experts to combine large-scale weather models with small-scale topographic models.

 

Truewind’s estimates of wind speed at a location have an uncertainty margin of 0.35 meters a second. It says its estimates on potential wind energy are accurate to within 10%.