Take a Tour of Every Wind Turbine in the US with this Interactive Map

This interactive map shows every wind turbine in the US, from huge wind farm facilities down to individual turbines. It was put together by the US Geological Survey as part of an initiative to look at how wind power development is affecting the country’s wildlife. They highlighted wind power as one of the fastest growing renewable energy sources, which accounted for three percent of the nation's electricty in 2012.

But it’s impossible to assess the impact of wind energy without knowing where exactly wind turbines are located. “Prior to this study, there was no publicly available national-level data set of wind turbines,” the USGS wrote in a blog post last week. The new map was built with publicly available data and includes detailed information about each turbine listed (there are over 47,000 in total), including its height, blade length, and how much energy it can produce. The USGS used satellite imagery to confirm the location of each turbine within 10 metres to verify the quality of their database.

And what’s really cool, as the blog CleanTechnica discovered, is that you can zoom in to any one turbine and see it for yourself via high-res satellite image—or more often its shadow on the land, as the aerial images tend to only capture the top of the pole and blades. The screenshot above is what I saw when I zoomed into the closest site I could find to New York, the single turbine at Bayonne Municipal Utilities Authority in New Jersey.

In the video below, they go through a load of other useful ways you can use the map, which is called WindFarm Mapper. You can use a location tool to type in an address and find nearby turbines, or use a search tool to look for specific types of turbine. An exemplar search for “high school” brings up seven sites located at high schools. A filter tool also lets you visualise the turbines by, for instance, how powerful or how tall they are.

 They explained their motivation for the project:

Knowing the location of individual turbines, as well as information such as the make, model, height, area of the turbine blades, and capacity creates new opportunities for research, and important information for land and resource management.  For example, turbine-level data will improve scientists’ ability to study wildlife collisions, the wakes caused by wind turbines, the interaction between wind turbines and ground based radar, and how wind energy facilities overlap with migratory flyways.

The USGS acknowledges that the map will be helpful for NGOs, land managers, scientists, and the interested public, in addition to their specific wildlife impact study, which will begin once they’ve developed and peer-reviewed their methodology. For now, you can sit back and enjoy clicking through your own personalised turbine tour.