Preliminary Estimation of Onshore/Offshore Wind Resource Potential in South Korea

The wind resource potential of South Korea is estimated preliminarily using GIS (Geographical Information System) and the medium-resolution national wind map which is being established via numerical wind simulation. The wind resource potential is classified into theoretical, geographical, technical and implementation potentials, with the calculation results of each stage verified by comparison with those from other countries. In case of developing 5 and 17.5% of the onshore and offshore wind resources, the corresponding technological potential of South Korea has been estimated as 37.7 and 80.3TWh/yr (14.6 & 35.4GW) for onshore and offshore, respectively. The potential for implementation to levels similar to those of leading European countries for wind energy have been approximated to be 9.4 and 20.1TWh/yr (3.6 & 8.8GW) for onshore and offshore, respectively. The sum of these two accounts for 3% of the gross supply of inland energy consumption in South Korea during 2007.