A wind turbine’s “specific power” rating relates its capacity to the swept area of its rotor in terms of Watt per square meter. For a given generator capacity, specific power declines as rotor size increases. In land-rich but capacity-constrained wind power markets, such as the United States, developers have an economic incentive to maximize megawatt-hours per constrained megawatt, and so have favored turbines with ever-lower specific power. To date, this trend toward lower specific power has pushed capacity factors higher while reducing the levelized cost of energy. We employ geospatial levelized cost of energy analysis across the United States to explore whether this trend is likely to continue. We find that under reasonable cost scenarios (i.e. presuming that logistical challenges from very large blades are surmountable), low-specific-power turbines could continue to be in demand going forward. Beyond levelized cost of energy, the boost in market value that low-specific-power turbines provide could become increasingly important as wind penetration grows.

Background Because of the strong link between childhood obesity and adulthood obesity comorbidities, and the difficulty in decreasing body mass index (BMI) later in life, effective strategies are needed to address this condition in early childhood. The ability to predict obesity before age five could be a useful tool, allowing prevention strategies to focus on high risk children. The few existing prediction models for obesity in childhood have primarily employed data from longitudinal cohort studies, relying on difficult to collect data that are not readily available to all practitioners. Instead, we utilized real-world unaugmented electronic health record (EHR) data from the first two years of life to predict obesity status at age five, an approach not yet taken in pediatric obesity research. Methods and findings We trained a variety of machine learning algorithms to perform both binary classification and regression. Following previous studies demonstrating different obesity determinants for boys and girls, we similarly developed separate models for both groups. In each of the separate models for boys and girls we found that weight for length z-score, BMI between 19 and 24 months, and the last BMI measure recorded before age two were the most important features for prediction. The best performing models were able to predict obesity with an Area Under the Receiver Operator Characteristic Curve (AUC) of 81.7% for girls and 76.1% for boys. Conclusions We were able to predict obesity at age five using EHR data with an AUC comparable to cohort-based studies, reducing the need for investment in additional data collection. Our results suggest that machine learning approaches for predicting future childhood obesity using EHR data could improve the ability of clinicians and researchers to drive future policy, intervention design, and the decision-making process in a clinical setting.

The Offshore Wind Market Report: 2024 Edition provides detailed information on the U.S. and global offshore wind energy industries to inform policymakers, researchers, and analysts about technology, economic, and market trends. The report provides the status of more than 322 operating offshore wind energy projects in the global fleet through Dec. 31, 2023, as well as the broader global pipeline of projects in various development stages. To provide current information and discussion on the emerging offshore wind industry in the United States, this report tracks significant U.S. domestic progress and events from Jan. 1, 2023, to May 31, 2024. Maps of the U.S. pipeline activity and Call Areas are shown in Figure ES-1. U.S. Offshore Wind Energy MarketThe first commercial-scale 1 offshore wind power plant in the United States, the 132megawatt (MW) South Fork Wind Farm off Rhode Island, began delivering power to New York in November 2023 and was fully commissioned on March 14, 2024. Another commercial-scale offshore wind power plant, the 806-MW Vineyard Wind 1 project, also achieved first power in January 2024 with the installation of several operating turbines and remained under construction through the publication of this report (August 2024). 2 As of May 31, 2024, there were 174 MW of offshore wind power in operation. The U.S. offshore wind energy pipeline had 4,097 MW under construction as of May 31, 2024. Three projects contribute to this total: Vineyard Wind 1 (806 MW), Revolution Wind (704 MW), and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (2,587 MW). This is an increase of more than 300% from the 938 MW under construction reported in the Offshore Wind Market Report: 2023 Edition (Musial et al. 2023). By May 31, 2024, the U.S. offshore wind energy project development and operational pipeline reached a potential generating capacity of 80,523 MW. The U.S. offshore wind energy pipeline grew 53% (27,836 MW) from the previous edition of this report. Notable additions include the following: Eight proposed lease areas in the Gulf of Maine provided 15,702 MW of pipeline growth, two proposed lease areas in the mid-Atlantic provided 4,499 MW, two proposed lease areas off the coast of Oregon provided 3,156 MW, and four proposed lease areas in the Gulf of Mexico added 6,638 MW. Finally, one research lease area in the Gulf of Maine contributed 144 MW in potential capacity to the U.S. offshore wind industry pipeline. 3 October 2024. On April 24, 2024, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced the new BOEM leasing plan through 2028 (U.S. Department of the Interior 2024), with 7 of the 12 new proposed offshore wind energy auctions in deep water suited for floating offshore wind technology.On March 22, 2024, the Internal Revenue Service issued guidance that updated the eligibility criteria for offshore wind projects seeking the Energy Communities Bonus Credit 5 passed under the Inflation Reduction Act. Offshore wind projects with multiple points of interconnection may benefit from bonus credits if they locate any power condition...

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s (NREL's) internal offshore wind database, which is built on internal research and a wide variety of data sources, including peer-reviewed literature, press releases, industry news reports, manufacturer specification sheets, and global offshore wind project announcements. For the database, NREL has verified and sourced data from the following publications:• The 4C Offshore Wind Database (4C Offshore 2020) • Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) Renewable Energy Project Database (BNEF 2020) • 4C Offshore Vessel Database (4C Offshore 2020) • Wood Mackenzie Wind Turbine Trends (Wood Mackenzie 2020). • Link to 2019 Data Table NREL | 5 Scope and Pipeline Definitions• This work defines the offshore wind project pipeline as potential offshore wind development indicated by developer announcements or by areas made available for offshore wind development by regulatory agencies. • The scope of this report covers the global fleet of projects in the pipeline through December 31, 2019. • This report also covers recent developments and events in the United States through March 31, 2020, projects that have been completed before March 31, 2020, and selectively covers significant industry events through August 2020. • Any estimates of capacities and project dates are shown as reported by project developers or state/federal agencies. • All dollar amounts are reported in 2019 U.S. dollars, unless indicated otherwise.• In this analysis, the U.S. pipeline capacity includes the sum of project-specific capacities and the undeveloped lease area potential capacities based on a project density of 3 megawatts (MW)/km 2 . • For further discussion on methodology and data sources, please refer to the "2018 Offshore Wind Technologies Market Report" (Musial et al. 2019).