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These data represent offshore wind turbines and supporting infrastructure within the United States Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) as of February 2024. Seven turbines are operational, five at the Block Island Wind site and two at the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind site. The seven turbines are responsible for 42 megawatts of power generation capacity. Additional turbines are actively under construction at the Vineyard Wind 1 site, South Fork Wind site, Revolution Wind site, and the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind site.

Areas within the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf where the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has executed a lease for development of offshore wind power.

This data collection contains geospatial data from models predicting the suitability of Wind Energy Areas (WEA) for the Gulf of Mexico Call Area. It includes a constraints shapefile created using 18 data layers that represent conflicts for offshore wind development. Also included is a final suitability shapefile, created using 53 data layers. The geometric mean of the six submodels (i.e., national security, industry, and operation, natural and cultural resources, fisheries, logistics, and economics) was used to calculate an overall suitability score. The geometric mean was chosen because it grants equal importance to each variable (Bovee 1986; Longdill et al. 2008; Silva et al. 2011; Muñoz-Mas et al. 2012). Furthermore, all submodels had equal weight within the suitability model. The resulting suitability score is for general offshore wind spatial planning, with scores approaching 0 representing low suitability and 1 representing high suitability relative to the other grid cells. Any grid that contained a data layer with a 0 score (i.e., constraints data layer) was deemed unsuitable for offshore wind development.

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These data represent the average monthly wind speed and direction at the surface of the ocean. Source data includes values from January 1, 1979, to December 31, 2010, at hourly temporal resolution, with a spatial resolution of 0.313 degrees latitude x 0.312 degrees longitude. Values for wind speed are in meters per second and wind direction in degrees from True North.