U.S. Offshore Wind Economic Potential Analysis 2015-2030

Encompassing output from a National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) report analyzing the economic potential of offshore wind at over 7,000 U.S. coastal sites. It models the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) and levelized avoided cost of energy (LACE) for fixed-bottom and floating wind technologies from 2015 to 2030. The data originates from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Use Cases

• Model the spatial variation of levelized cost of energy (LCOE) across more than 7,000 coastal sites to identify economically viable project locations.
• Compare levelized avoided cost of energy (LACE) between fixed-bottom and floating offshore wind technologies to assess technology competitiveness.
• Analyze cost reduction trends from 2015 to 2030 for offshore wind economic potential in the United States.

Strengths

• Analysis covers over 7,000 distinct U.S. coastal sites, providing high spatial granularity.
• Includes modeled data for two key economic metrics, LCOE and LACE, for two technology types.
• Provides a 15-year temporal analysis from 2015 to 2030 for tracking cost trends.

Limitations

• Specific data structure (rows, columns, sample data) is unavailable, complicating direct analysis.
• Data is model output from a specific report (NREL/TP-6A20-67675) and may not reflect real-world, post-2030 conditions.
• Available only in a BIN file format, which may require specialized tools or libraries to access.

Provenance

Source

National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) report NREL/TP-6A20-67675, aggregated by Data.gov.

Collection Method

Model output from an NREL assessment report analyzing economic potential.

Time Range

2015 to 2030

Freshness

Last updated March 2026, but the analysis period ends in 2030.

Geography

United States coastal sites