NREL_HourlyWind_Hawaii_polysandpoints.gdb

Point Layers: For the Hawaii offshore region, modeled mean wind speed data on an approximately 2-km grid were provided by Vaisala/3TIER, a renewable energy consulting firm. Each 1.2-km BOEM aliquot grid cell was assigned a mean wind speed that corresponds to the nearest 2-km Vaisala grid cell representing the majority of its area. The time-varying component of wind speed was calculated by analyzing the nearest MERRA (http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/merra/) 17-year time-series record. The Weibull parameters were estimated from the MERRA wind speeds by computing the parameters of a Weibull distribution that has the same mean speed and wind energy as the observed MERRA data. These parameters were then scaled to match the Vaisala wind speeds assigned to each 1.2-km aliquot. This process created a long-term, monthly, and hourly (by month and for the whole 17-year period) Weibull representation of the 17-year wind speed for each aliquot. The resulting dataset is intended to provide broad estimates of wind speed variation for the purposes of identifying possible good wind energy sites. It is not intended to provide estimates of possible energy production for the purpose of making offshore wind project investment or financing decisions in specific locations.Explanation of Attributes:Results in the geodatabase are reported on the existing 1.2 km x 1.2 km aliquot grid defined by BOEM for the Hawaii offshore region. Wind speed statistics are reported at the center point of each aliquot grid, but represent the mean values over the entire area of each grid cell. The hybrid MERRA/AWST data set delivered to BOEM is a geodatabase consisting of one layer for the long-term statistics, one layer for each month, and one polygon layer of aliquots covered by the data. The long-term shapefile includes mean wind speed and Weibull parameters to capture the long-term wind speed distribution of the entire 17-year MERRA time series. Each monthly shapefile contains mean wind speed and Weibull parameters for that month overall and for each hour of the day within that month. All times are in HST (UTC-10). Polygon Layers - Polygons were created by creating a raster grid of the point files using the closest approximate x,y distance for a BOEM aliquot block of 0.0175 degrees, reclassifying the raster into wind classes and generating a polygon file from the reclassified raster.

Data and Resources

Field Value
accessLevel public
bureauCode {010:06}
catalog_@context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
catalog_describedBy https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
identifier 39e746a4-acfc-472e-83a6-c6dc15c311fe
metadata_type geospatial
modified 2018-02-21
old-spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": [[[-162.4917, 18.0583], [-153.925, 18.0583], [-153.925, 23.5417], [-162.4917, 23.5417], [-162.4917, 18.0583]]]}
publisher Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash 52666e112c2c05bc1571b11d70506abe28e672fa
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": [[[-162.4917, 18.0583], [-153.925, 18.0583], [-153.925, 23.5417], [-162.4917, 23.5417], [-162.4917, 18.0583]]]}
theme {geospatial}
Groups
  • AmeriGEOSS
  • National Provider
  • North America
Tags
  • amerigeo
  • amerigeoss
  • ckan
  • climate-and-weather-theme
  • geo
  • geoss
  • hawaii
  • national
  • north-america
  • united-states
  • us
  • wind-energy
isopen False
license_id notspecified
license_title License not specified
maintainer Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (Point of Contact)
maintainer_email BOEMPublicAffairs@boem.gov
metadata_created 2025-11-22T03:25:18.333981
metadata_modified 2025-11-22T03:25:18.333985
notes Point Layers: For the Hawaii offshore region, modeled mean wind speed data on an approximately 2-km grid were provided by Vaisala/3TIER, a renewable energy consulting firm. Each 1.2-km BOEM aliquot grid cell was assigned a mean wind speed that corresponds to the nearest 2-km Vaisala grid cell representing the majority of its area. The time-varying component of wind speed was calculated by analyzing the nearest MERRA (http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/merra/) 17-year time-series record. The Weibull parameters were estimated from the MERRA wind speeds by computing the parameters of a Weibull distribution that has the same mean speed and wind energy as the observed MERRA data. These parameters were then scaled to match the Vaisala wind speeds assigned to each 1.2-km aliquot. This process created a long-term, monthly, and hourly (by month and for the whole 17-year period) Weibull representation of the 17-year wind speed for each aliquot. The resulting dataset is intended to provide broad estimates of wind speed variation for the purposes of identifying possible good wind energy sites. It is not intended to provide estimates of possible energy production for the purpose of making offshore wind project investment or financing decisions in specific locations.Explanation of Attributes:Results in the geodatabase are reported on the existing 1.2 km x 1.2 km aliquot grid defined by BOEM for the Hawaii offshore region. Wind speed statistics are reported at the center point of each aliquot grid, but represent the mean values over the entire area of each grid cell. The hybrid MERRA/AWST data set delivered to BOEM is a geodatabase consisting of one layer for the long-term statistics, one layer for each month, and one polygon layer of aliquots covered by the data. The long-term shapefile includes mean wind speed and Weibull parameters to capture the long-term wind speed distribution of the entire 17-year MERRA time series. Each monthly shapefile contains mean wind speed and Weibull parameters for that month overall and for each hour of the day within that month. All times are in HST (UTC-10). Polygon Layers - Polygons were created by creating a raster grid of the point files using the closest approximate x,y distance for a BOEM aliquot block of 0.0175 degrees, reclassifying the raster into wind classes and generating a polygon file from the reclassified raster.
num_resources 1
num_tags 12
title NREL_HourlyWind_Hawaii_polysandpoints.gdb