Patent ID: 7426454

Claim:
A method for determining a location of a conversion device for converting wind energy into electrical energy, the method comprising: establishing a plurality of data layers, including at least a wind data layer and a transmission grid data layer, each data layer containing attribute data that is associated with corresponding location data, the wind data layer based on physical measurements of wind for use within a data processing system; aligning the location data of one layer with the location data of other layers to form a composite layer; searching the composite layer to identify a first compliant location data with a target value or a target value range of the attribute data for the wind data layer; searching the composite layer to identify a second compliant location data with a target value or a target value range of the attribute data for the transmission grid data; searching the composite layer to identify a third compliant location data with a target value or target value range of the attribute data for an additional data layer other than the wind data layer and the transmission grid data layer; determining an intersection of the first compliant location data, the second compliant location data, and third compliant location data, and identifying the intersection as one or more preferential regions for locating an energy conversion device, where the one or more preferential regions are expressed to user as a contour map.