Take a look at the above picture. It’s what the wind farm locations look like in Oklahoma and Texas according to the newest wind turbine database released by a number of federal agencies.

The United States Wind Turbine Database (USWTDB) provides the locations of land-based and offshore wind turbines in the United States, corresponding wind project information, and turbine technical specifications.

The creation of this database was jointly funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO) via the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) Electricity Markets and Policy Group, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Energy Resources Program , and the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). The database is being continuously updated through collaboration among LBNL, USGS, and AWEA.

Wind turbine records are collected and compiled from various public and private sources, digitized or position-verified from aerial imagery, and quality checked. Technical specifications for turbines are obtained directly from project developers and turbine manufacturers, or they are based on data obtained from public sources.

The latest release includes data on 63,003 turbines covering 43 states (plus Guam and PR). The most recent turbines added to the USWTDB became operational as recently as the third quarter of 2019, with a few from the fourth quarter 2019. The oldest turbines in the data set were installed prior to 1990.

The data and accompanying maps are available by clicking here.

Source: Department of Energy