Description

Environment and Climate Change Canada's Wind Atlas web site aims at developing new meteorological tools to be used by Canada's wind energy industry. It offers the possibility to browse through the results of the numerical simulations that were run on all of Canada in order to determine its wind energy potential. Consultants and the general public will find here valuable data about this promising renewable energy.

This site features colour maps representing the average wind velocity and power on the whole country, as well as corresponding geophysical characteristics, all available in an easy to use browsing interface that allows you to go quickly to the heart of the meteorological data.

Also offered are an overview of the methodology used to generate the different simulation maps, and a download section where data files can be obtained in case you would like to run custom simulations.

The Wind Atlas, unveiled in October 2004, is a contribution from the EOLE Project, a research project hosted by Environment and Climate Change Canada (RPN) and initiated in year 2000. Most of the results are based on WEST (Wind Energy Simulation Toolkit), a system developed for the project.

Robert Benoit, then Head of the Wind Energy project, and Wei Yu, Physical Scientist, were presented with the 2005 R.J. Templin Award, given by the Canadian Wind Energy Association, for their outstanding contribution to the development of Canadian wind energy technology.