Wind Data Measured in Alaska

The table below lists the locations in Alaska with publicly available wind resource data. Some of the stations are part of AEA's Anemometer Loan Program while others are airport weather stations managed by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC.)

Each AEA met tower site includes a Wind Data Report (pdf), the raw 10-minute data that was collected, and the processed data set. The processed data has been checked for quality control, scaled to long-term trends, and averaged into hourly values. Both the raw and processed data are tab-delimmited text files which can be imported into an Excel spreadsheet or other software for further data analysis and manipulation. The NCDC sites have a Station Summary Report (pdf) with photos and graphs and a Long-Term Data file with summary tables of weather data (text file.) Some may also have a more detailed wind data report.

For background on how to interpret the data and graphs, please read the Introduction to Wind Resource Data (pdf) and Data Processing Procedures and Definitions (pdf).

NOTE: Some of the reports posted on this page contain wind power production and diesel displacement estimates.  These estimates could differ substantially from observed production from an installed system. There are many hard to predict factors that can reduce the amount of wind power that is delivered to the customer.  Some of the factors that need to be considered on a project by project basis include the following: turbine downtime, blade icing and/or soiling, transformer/line losses, turbine array losses, extreme weather events, and wind power integration design.