NREL Wave Energy Assessment for the United States and Puerto Rico

This dataset estimates the naturally available and technically recoverable U.S. wave energy resources, using a 51-month Wavewatch III hindcast database developed especially for this study by National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) National Centers for Environmental Prediction. For total resource estimation, wave power density in terms of kilowatts per meter is aggregated across a unit diameter circle. This approach is fully consistent with accepted global practice and includes the resource made available by the lateral transfer of wave energy along wave crests, which enables densities within a few kilometers of a linear array, even for fixed terminator devices.

###Source###
The Wave Energy Resource Assessment project is a joint venture between [NREL](http://www.nrel.gov/), [EPRI](http://my.epri.com/portal/server.pt?), and [Virginia Tech](http://www.vt.edu/). EPRI is the prime contractor, Virginia Tech is responsible for development of the models and estimating the wave resource, and NREL serves as an independent validator and also develops the final GIS-based display of the data.

###Geographic Range###
US coastline, including AK, HI and Puerto Rico, out to 50 nautical miles.

###Grid Properties###
Grids are derived from WaveWatch III grids. Near the coast of the lower 48 and HI, grids are squares, 4 minutes by 4 minutes (15 per degree).
For the Alaska grids AK and BS, the grid is 4 minutes of latitude by 8 minutes of longitude (15 per deg by 7.5 per deg).

*Exception*: The area in the Bering Sea around the Pribilof (St Paul and St George) Islands is 10 min lat by 15 min lon. Limits: 55.666 to 58.000 N, -172.000 to - 168.000 E, 17 cols, 15 rows.

Farther offshore, the grid is 10 min by 10 min. (only seen in WM and PR)

The 10 min by 10 min grid appears near the edge of a few grids:

* SW corner of WM (off Mexican coast)
* SE corner of WM (deep water)
* PR - around edges (far from PR and US territory)

###Bathymetric Impacts on Resource Assessment###
Bathymetric effects are known to have a large effect on wave characteristics at depths shallower than approximately 20m (~65 ft) on the Atlantic coast and 50 m (~160 ft) on the Pacific coast. A variance between depths exists due to the feature differences for each continental shelf. The methodology used in this resource assessment precludes providing site-specific information to such developers. Reliable site-specific information in shallow waters can only be produced using results from models with higher spatial resolution that include shallow-water physics. The wave resource assessment group acknowledges that its results will not be accurate in the shallower waters of the inner continental shelf. These shallow water regions are located within the dark gray boundaries on the map.

Data that are undefined or unrepresentable are indicated by NaN values in the CSV and as a -9999 value in the shapefile tables.

###License Info###
* Please cite Virginia Tech for data and modeling
* Please cite NREL for GIS files

DISCLAIMER NOTICE
This GIS data was developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory ("NREL"), which is operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy ("DOE"). The user is granted the right, without any fee or cost, to use, copy, modify, alter, enhance and distribute this data for any purpose whatsoever, provided that this entire notice appears in all copies of the data. Further, the user of this data agrees to credit NREL in any publications or software that incorporate or use the data.

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