Last month, a national lab issued a set of colorful maps that reveal America’s resources in renewable energy. Broken down into the major forms — solar, wind, biomass and geothermal — they are an indispensable guide for regions trying to figure out their energy mix, and a fascinating lens through which to view our natural resources.
They are best viewed side by side, and so I recently created a webpage that takes these National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) maps and compares them with one click. You’ll want to open it in a second page and have it handy as you read this.
Solar Photovoltaic: When it comes to the best regions for solar photovoltaic — turning the Sun’s radiating photons directly into electricity — a vivid sunburn covers inland Southern California, southern Nevada, and generous portions of Arizona and New Mexico.
Concentrated Solar: Concentrated solar works by using mirrors to bounce sunlight onto a central point, and uses the resulting heat to generate steam. This approach creates prodigious amounts of electricity but is rendered ineffective if a cloud blocks the sun. For this reason, it’s the ideal solution in a zone of Southern California and Nevada where months go by with hardly a cloud in the sky.
Wind: Note the belt of purple that traverses the Great Plains states, from Texas through Kansas and Nebraska and up through the Dakotas. This resource is the reason that Iowa gets 20 percent of its energy from wind, and why wind-energy tax credits are a hot issue in the presidential race.
When one looks offshore, the resource is everywhere.
The wind blows on average eight meters or more a second all along the Atlantic Coast from South Carolina up through Maine, which explains why projects such as the Atlantic Wind Connection have momentum. Strong winds also flow across all of the Great Lakes and along the shorelines of Alaska, Hawaii, and the entire Pacific Coast. The most ferocious winds of all are in the deeper waters of Maine, at the border of California and Oregon, around Hawaii and in the Aleutian Islands, where the wind typically blows faster than 10.5 meters an hour. Also, look what a great energy source Texas has offshore of Corpus Christi.
Biomass: Biomass is the leftovers from agriculture, forestry, milling and food that can be converted to fuel. As the map shows, not every part of the country is equally endowed.
Fortunately, lots of fuel material can be found in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama — states that lack strong sun or wind (except for hurricanes, of course). Excess greenery is also a potential fuel source in the Upper Midwest from eastern North Dakota through Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois, which are near the winds off the Great Lakes but otherwise lack sources of renewable energy.
Areas of solid green (and not just in politics) can be found in Oregon and Washington, Northern California, some inland counties of Southern California, and the two farthest corners of the Eastern Seaboard — the state of Maine and the counties of Florida bordering the Everglades.
Geothermal: The West wins once again when it comes to geothermal resources, or hot rocks lying a few thousand feet underground that can be injected with water to create steam. By a large margin, the most accessible heat is in Nevada, Eastern Oregon and Idaho and Utah and Colorado, with significant pockets in New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
These maps don’t tell the whole story. NREL simultaneously issued another report, “U.S. Renewable Energy Technical Potentials: a GIS Analysis,” that takes the raw resources and examines where they are actually practical, based on factors like topography and land-use laws. By that measure, what is the state most promising for almost every sort of renewable energy? Texas.
Special thanks to Code With Me DC and especially Danny DeBelius for teaching me the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to put the maps page together.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidferris/2012/08/27/which-states-have-the-most-wind-solar-or-biomass-new-maps-tell-all/
They are best viewed side by side, and so I recently created a webpage that takes these National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) maps and compares them with one click. You’ll want to open it in a second page and have it handy as you read this.
Solar Photovoltaic: When it comes to the best regions for solar photovoltaic — turning the Sun’s radiating photons directly into electricity — a vivid sunburn covers inland Southern California, southern Nevada, and generous portions of Arizona and New Mexico.
Concentrated Solar: Concentrated solar works by using mirrors to bounce sunlight onto a central point, and uses the resulting heat to generate steam. This approach creates prodigious amounts of electricity but is rendered ineffective if a cloud blocks the sun. For this reason, it’s the ideal solution in a zone of Southern California and Nevada where months go by with hardly a cloud in the sky.
Wind: Note the belt of purple that traverses the Great Plains states, from Texas through Kansas and Nebraska and up through the Dakotas. This resource is the reason that Iowa gets 20 percent of its energy from wind, and why wind-energy tax credits are a hot issue in the presidential race.
When one looks offshore, the resource is everywhere.
The wind blows on average eight meters or more a second all along the Atlantic Coast from South Carolina up through Maine, which explains why projects such as the Atlantic Wind Connection have momentum. Strong winds also flow across all of the Great Lakes and along the shorelines of Alaska, Hawaii, and the entire Pacific Coast. The most ferocious winds of all are in the deeper waters of Maine, at the border of California and Oregon, around Hawaii and in the Aleutian Islands, where the wind typically blows faster than 10.5 meters an hour. Also, look what a great energy source Texas has offshore of Corpus Christi.
Biomass: Biomass is the leftovers from agriculture, forestry, milling and food that can be converted to fuel. As the map shows, not every part of the country is equally endowed.
Fortunately, lots of fuel material can be found in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama — states that lack strong sun or wind (except for hurricanes, of course). Excess greenery is also a potential fuel source in the Upper Midwest from eastern North Dakota through Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois, which are near the winds off the Great Lakes but otherwise lack sources of renewable energy.
Areas of solid green (and not just in politics) can be found in Oregon and Washington, Northern California, some inland counties of Southern California, and the two farthest corners of the Eastern Seaboard — the state of Maine and the counties of Florida bordering the Everglades.
Geothermal: The West wins once again when it comes to geothermal resources, or hot rocks lying a few thousand feet underground that can be injected with water to create steam. By a large margin, the most accessible heat is in Nevada, Eastern Oregon and Idaho and Utah and Colorado, with significant pockets in New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
These maps don’t tell the whole story. NREL simultaneously issued another report, “U.S. Renewable Energy Technical Potentials: a GIS Analysis,” that takes the raw resources and examines where they are actually practical, based on factors like topography and land-use laws. By that measure, what is the state most promising for almost every sort of renewable energy? Texas.
Special thanks to Code With Me DC and especially Danny DeBelius for teaching me the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to put the maps page together.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidferris/2012/08/27/which-states-have-the-most-wind-solar-or-biomass-new-maps-tell-all/
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