## 3 Materials and Methods  
The first step of the study was acquisition of the wind speed data belonging to meteorological stations and land cover data, in order to extrapolate the wind speeds to 100 m. Land cover data were used to determine the friction coefficient according to the roughness of the surface at the station. After the data acquisition, the wind speeds were extrapolated to 100 m by using the Hellmann equation. Following the calculation of the wind speeds of all the stations at a height of 100 m, the wind speed map of the study area was created with five different spatial interpolation methods of GIS tools. Interpolation methods were examined in terms of their accuracy and the most appropriate method was determined. Wind speed maps of the districts were produced by using the extract by mask function of GIS tools. The wind speed maps were converted to point-based shapefile by using the raster to point function of GIS tools to make wind potential calculations using the wind speed values of cells. The wind speeds in the study area were divided into certain ranges to determine the wind energy potential in a related range. In order to calculate the number of wind turbines that can be installed in a certain area, an equation was produced according to the legal regulation in Turkey. Then, the power generated by one turbine was calculated according to the mean wind speed of each wind  
Figure 2: The location of Balikesir Province and its districts. speed range. Then, the wind energy potential was calculated for each wind speed range. Finally, the total wind energy potential in the study area was obtained. Database files (.dbf) of the point-based wind speed maps were used to calculate the wind potential values. Calculations were made by using the Microsoft excel program. Details of the methodology are given below. Figure 3 shows the methodological framework of the study. Descriptions and sources of the data are shown in Table 3.  
Within the scope of the study, 5.5 years of average daily wind speed data from 32 meteorology stations in the Baltheseir Province between 1 January 2014 and 30 June 2019 were obtained from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (TSMS). The geographical distribution of the TSMS stations used in the study is shown in Figure 4. The wind speed measurements at these TSMS stations are carried out on poles with a height of 10 m. Therefore, it is more meaningful to determine wind speeds according to a turbine hub height suitable for today's technology, in order to produce supportive information about possible wind power plant locations. Figure 3: Methodological framework of the study. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline \hline
**Data** & **Content** & **Source** \\ \hline Wind speed & Wind speed at a height of 10 m & Turkish State Meteorological Service \\ Corine land cover & Land cover types & European Environment Agency (EEA) [44] \\ ASTGTM v003 & Digital elevation model & The United States Geological Survey (USGS) \\  & Residential areas, tourism areas, airports, areas of nature reserves, military areas, mining areas, organized industrial & Earth Explorer [45] \\ Regional environmental plan & regions, logistics centers, small industrial & General Directorate of Spatial Planning \\  & areas, organized agriculture and livestock & General Directorate of Spatial Planning \\  & regions, work areas such as industry and storage areas, and water surfaces & Global Administrative Areas \\ GADM boundary map & Province and district boundaries & Global Administrative Areas \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 3: Data sources. In this regard, the Hellmann equation shown in Equation (1) was used to obtain the wind speeds at a 100 m height from the measured wind speed values at a 10 m height. In this approach, calculations are made depending on the surface roughness of the region where the TSMS stations are located and the height at which the speed is required [46].