WinDS is a tool for modeling the expansion of wind electric generation and transmission capacity. Developed by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), it passes information from a Geographic Information System (GIS) into a linear program. The WinDS site has several documents about the tool including a detailed description of the linear program. The objective is to minimize the various costs (capital, operating, transmission, etc.). It requires a five page listing, not including definitions. While stepping through the entire LP formulation would be quite time-consuming, one could certainly learn a great deal about the deployment of wind energy by doing so.
Update (2/16/08):
There is now a story about WinDS featured on the home page of NREL’s web site.
November 11, 2008 at 12:49 pm
[...] energy (specifically wind energy). I came across this while reading GreenOR. Here’s the original entry on it. This application has been developed by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory [...]