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Map depicting meteorological stations and their elevations in Pakistan.

NREL Resource Maps and Toolkit for Pakistan

The products contained on this Web site were developed by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) for the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) South Asia Regional Initiative for Energy Cooperation (SARI/E). The USAID/SARI/E program promotes energy security in South Asia through three activity areas: (1) cross border energy trade, (2) energy market formation, and (3) regional clean energy development. Through these activities SARI/E facilitates more efficient regional energy resource utilization, works toward transparent and profitable energy practices, mitigates the environmental impacts of energy production, and increases regional access to energy. SARI/Energy countries include: Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. NREL's focus in SARI/E has been in promoting clean energy development through removal of resource information barriers in participating SARI/E countries.

This Web site contains high-resolution wind and solar resource maps and data products for Pakistan. The data were output in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) format and incorporated into a Geospatial Toolkit (GsT). The GsT allows the user to examine the resource data in a geospatial context along with other key information relevant to renewable energy development, such as transportation networks, transmission corridors, existing power facilities, load centers, terrain conditions, and land use.

The high-resolution (1-km) annual wind power maps were developed using a numerical modeling approach along with NREL's empirical validation methodology. The high-resolution (10-km) annual and seasonal solar resource maps were developed using weather satellite data incorporated into a site-time specific solar mapping approach developed at the U.S. State University of New York at Albany. Data products from the wind and solar maps have been output in a GIS format and incorporated into the GsTs. Working within the GsT, the user can also incorporate location-specific data directly into NREL's Micropower Optimization Model, HOMER, to design least-cost hybrid renewable power systems to meet electric-load requirements at the village level.

Please contact David Renne at david_renne@nrel.gov for any additional information.

Some of the following documents are available as Adobe Acrobat PDFs. Download Adobe Reader.

Wind Resources

Maps

  • Annual maps of satellite-derived wind data (speed, counts, standard deviation, power density, and Weibull k) at 10-m above the surface for the Arabian Sea (PDF 343 KB)
  • Monthly maps of satellite-derived wind speed estimates at 10-m above the surface for the Arabian Sea (PDF 845 KB)
  • Wind Power Density (W/m2) at 50-m Above Ground Level (PDF 1.8 MB)

Data

  • Graphical files of seasonal and diurnal data from surface weather stations (ZIP 26.6 MB)
  • Graphical files of seasonal and diurnal data from PMD (ZIP 30.6 MB)
  • Wind Power Density at 50-m Above Ground Level GIS Data (ZIP 1.4 MB)

Documentation

  • Wind Resource Assessment Presentation (PDF 3.9 MB)

Solar Resources

Maps

  • Map of Meteorological Stations and Elevation (ZIP 542 KB)

Data

Documentation

  • Satellite-Derived Resource Assessment in Afghanistan and Pakistan in support of the USAID South Asia Regional Initiative (PDF 1.0 MB)

Geospatial Toolkit (GsT)

  • GsT with full (high resolution) data interfaced to HOMER (EXE 34.8 MB)
  • GsT with "lite" data (lower resolution) interfaced to HOMER (EXE 14.8 MB)
  • Read Me File (MS Word 44 KB)