U.S. Potential Wind Capacity Cumulative Area vs. Gross Capacity Factor

This chart shows the potential wind capacity above a given gross capacity factor at various heights as another way to express how new technologies affect the potential developable land area. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated the land area and potential wind capacity in various capacity factor ranges for each state using the Wind Site Assessment Dashboard from AWS Truepower LLC. This table lists the estimates of land area with a gross capacity of 35% and greater from development of the "available" land area after exclusions. In the table, the column titled "installed capacity" refers to the potential megawatts of rated capacity that could be installed on the available land area. NREL reduced the wind potential estimates by excluding areas unlikely to be developed (see Wind Resource Exclusion Table for more detail).