Many people interested in the possible application of wind energy in the DR ask where this potential can best be tapped. At present, the best available reference to answer this is a "wind atlas" published in late 2001 by the US Government's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), in cooperation with the U.S. National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) and the company Winrock. 

The study concluded that some 1,500 square kilometers -- about 3% of the country's total surface area -- held good wind power generation potential, representing about 10,000 megawatts (MW) of untapped power.  These areas are contained in the extreme southwest (Barahona and Pedernales provinces) and northwest (Monte Cristi and Puerto Plata provinces), plus a smattering of sites in high altitude areas of the country's interior suitable for providing to rural communities currently not served  by the electricity grid.

The study also suggested that some 20 other provinces had wind power generation potential of at least 100 MW, three of these possibly as much as 1,000 MW.

In the coming months the Green Team will be examining in more detail wind power's potential for the DR, and the challenges ahead in tapping it for both micro (individual households and farms, or small community clusters) and macro (as part of the national power grid) purposes.  We offer these maps, drawn from the atlas, as our introduction to the topic.  If you want to examine the full atlas and the methods and data used to complie it, check out the following:

Elliott, D., Schwartz, M., George, R., Haymes, S., Heimiller, D., Scott, G., Kline, J. Wind Energy Atlas of the Dominican Republic.  Published October 2001 by NREL & USAID. Available for download at http://www.rsvp.nrel.gov/pdfs/wind_atlas_dominican_republic.pdf