National Offshore Wind Resource Data with 2-Kilometer Resolution

2000 to 2022 wind resource data for U.S. offshore regions, produced by the Department of Energy using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF). This dataset supersedes the older Wind Integration National Dataset (WIND) Toolkit for offshore areas and provides outputs at 5-minute and hourly resolution. It was generated with a regional modeling approach, validated against observations, and offers a spatial resolution of 2 km.

Use Cases

• Wind farm siting analysis using 2 km resolution wind speed and direction data.
• Grid integration studies leveraging long-term, high-temporal-resolution (5-minute) wind profiles.
• Validation of other meteorological models against this DOE-produced, observation-validated dataset.
• Regional climate and energy resource assessment for specific U.S. offshore zones (e.g., North Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico).

Strengths

• Covers a long time series from 2000 to 2022 for multiple U.S. offshore regions.
• Provides high spatial resolution (2 km) and high temporal resolution (5-minute) outputs.
• Model configuration was validated against available observations for each region.

Limitations

• Specific column names and dataset size are not provided in the available metadata.
• Temporal coverage end dates vary by region (2019, 2020, or 2022), creating inconsistency.
• Sources conflict on the license, reporting both CC-BY-3.0 and CC-BY-4.0.

Provenance

Source

Department of Energy

Collection Method

Produced using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) v4.2.1, initialized with ERA-5 reanalysis data.

Time Range

2000 to 2022

Freshness

2026-03-24 12:07:12.952813

Geography

Offshore regions of the United States, including the North Atlantic, Mid Atlantic, Great Lakes, Hawaii, Gulf of Mexico, and Pacific regions.