Great Lakes Wind Could Supply One-third of U.S. Electricity

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http://www.celsias.com/article/great-lakes-wind-could-supply-one-third-us-electri/

Great Lakes Wind Could Supply One-third of U.S. Electricity

No sooner was the Great Lakes Basin Compact approved in October of 2008 than wind turbine consortiums and manufacturers started talking about the potential of Great Lakes wind to deliver massive amounts of clean energy to the Upper Midwest.

Their hopes and statistics are based on several wind distribution maps. The first, a government-sponsored wind mapping system, shows eastern Wisconsin having the greatest potential. A Wikipedia resource confirms this, and adds the Upper Peninsula area in Michigan as having wind speeds from 12 to 15 miles per hour offshore, with winds exceeding 20 miles per hour on Lake Michigan itself. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, a division of the Department of Energy, rates offshore wind speeds at both Lake Superior and Lake Michigan as ‘good', and wind speeds over the lakes themselves as ‘excellent'.

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These proposed freshwater, offshore wind farms, ringing the lakes from Superior to Huron, with Michigan as the flagship enterprise, could produce enough electricity to turn on the lights for all the roughly 40 million inhabitants of the region, with enough left over to light up Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, with Vermont added on as an afterthought.

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