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Summary: Exploring wind energy potential off the California coast
Qingfang Jiang,1
James D. Doyle,2
Tracy Haack,2
Michael J. Dvorak,3
Cristina L. Archer,4
and Mark Z. Jacobson3
Received 13 May 2008; revised 9 July 2008; accepted 13 August 2008; published 28 October 2008.
[1] Wind energy represents the nearest term cost-effective
renewable energy source. While efforts have been made to
assess wind energy potential over land around the world,
offshore wind energy resources are largely unexplored, in
part because these regions have relatively sparse wind
observations. In this study, the wind energy potential
offshore of the California coast is evaluated using a well-
tested high-resolution numerical model dataset. We found
that along the coastline, the low-level winds exhibit strong
spatial variation and are characterized by alternating
windspeed maxima and minima near coastal promontories
associated with the interaction between the marine
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