The World Bank Group in partnership with the Department of Wind Energy at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU Wind Energy) has launched the Global Wind Atlas 2.3.

The Global Wind Atlas supports wind power development during the exploration and preliminary wind resource assessment phases prior to the installation of meteorology measurement stations on site.

It is a free, web-based tool to help investors and policymakers identify potential sites for wind power generation virtually anywhere in the world. It will allow users to overlay additional data such as transmission lines and protected areas to identify possible zones or sites for wind development.

The Global Wind Atlas 1.0 was launched on November 28, 2017 at the Wind Europe conference. The latest version the Global Wind Atlas 2.3 was released at the end of November 2018. This version 2.3 follows closely after version 2.2.

Important new features

• Update power density data taking geographical variations of air density into account
• Add three new map layers with gross capacity factor for three IEC classes of 3.45 MW wind turbines with rotor diameters of 112m, 126m, and 136m, at hub height 100m.
• Add 2 new types of wind roses for customized areas: ‘Wind Speed Rose’ and ‘Wind Power Rose’
• Download GIS files for all wind layers per area of interest
• Extending the map generation tool with color scaling features
• Map generation of customized areas
• Update RIX and Orography layer to 250m
• Include legend ‘highlighter’ (moving arrow) responding to mouseover on map

The Global Wind Atlas covers both onshore and offshore potential. Currently, the Global Wind Atlas covers offshore potential up to 30 km from the coastline. The Global Wind Atlas is visited by users from across the globe. India belongs to the top 10 users, in terms up users accessing the Global Wind Atlas from a location in India.

Currently, the Global Wind Atlas has 9,000 regular users per month and the user number is steadily increasing.

In January 2017, the World Bank, in partnership with the International Solar Alliance (ISA), launched the Global Solar Atlas, a free, web-based tool to help investors and policymakers identify potential sites for solar power generation.