Mapping the Nation’s Wind Turbines

The U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Department of Energy, in collaboration with DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the American Wind Energy Association, have released the U.S. Wind Turbine Database and the USWTDB Viewer to access this new public dataset.

This new Wind Turbine Database is a comprehensive dataset of wind turbine locations and characteristics in the United States that is more accessible, more accurate, and more frequently updated than existing wind turbine datasets. This dataset and its associated viewer allow federal agencies to share data so that wind power projects can be properly developed and planned. The availability of this data is critical for planning by government agencies and researchers.

The database currently contains data on more than 57,000 turbines built at more than 1,700 wind projects in 43 states, as well as Puerto Rico and Guam, from the 1980s to 2018. UWTDB is an updated version of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Wind Farm Database and Viewer, the first publicly available interactive map and geographic dataset of onshore wind turbines in the United States.

The USGS’s primary role in this collaboration is to visually verify the location of turbines using high-resolution imagery and, if necessary, repair the location of turbines. The USGS has a large inventory of remote imagery and is skilled at interpreting digital imagery. In addition, the USGS verifies turbines that have been removed or “repowered,” which is the replacement of smaller turbines with larger ones.

The USGS also hosts the database on its Sciencebase platform and has developed Web Viewer This enables users to quickly find turbines and aggregate information about them.

For more information on this database and other USGS energy research, visit here. Subscribe to USGS Energy Science News USGS Energy Newsletter Or follow USGS twitter.