National and global wind resource assessment under six wind turbine installation scenarios

Based on ERA-20C data available for the period 2008-2010, the potential of six onshore wind turbine installation scenarios to cover current electricity consumption at the national and global scale was studied. The technical wind energy potential was estimated using the recently developed, highly accurate Burr-Generalized Extreme Value mixture distribution. The installation scenarios were evaluated by varying wind farm efficiency, the concentration of wind turbines, and wind turbine siting strategy for wind turbine densities of 1-25% of the land area. With the systematic installation of wind turbines at the national scale and international coordination of energy distribution, wind energy production could match current electricity consumption in the 2030s assuming a tenfold increase in current expansion rate. However, the results greatly differ from country to country mainly because of the meteorological potential, the total area available for wind turbine installation, and the population size. In industrialized countries such as China, France, Germany, and Japan, either low average annual wind energy yield or the large population prevents complete coverage of electricity consumption by wind energy at low and moderate wind turbine density. In developing countries including Ethiopia, Sudan or Kenia, where wind energy potential is high and electricity consumption is low, expansion of wind energy could greatly improve electricity supply. It was found that 98 countries could cover their current electricity consumption by an installed capacity of 0.0734 MW/km2. This installed capacity enables 73 countries to cover even a 100% increase of the current electricity consumption. Based on the range of evaluated scenarios, it is possible to estimate the upper and lower bounds of the technical potential predefined by the applied wind turbine densities.