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U.S. Wind Power Doubles to More Than 20 Gigawatts in Two Years

by: Greentech Media September 04, 2008 | about stocks: FAN / PWND    

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The amount of wind power that the United States can generate has doubled to more than 20 gigawatts in the last two years, the American Wind Energy Association said Wednesday.

Renewable-energy policies, such as state mandates that require utilities to get a certain amount of their energy from renewable sources, have helped drive the growth of U.S. wind from 10 gigawatts in 2006.

The wind association, also known as AWEA, attributes part of the success of wind specifically to its lower production cost compared with other renewables, such as solar power.

Earlier this year, the association said the United States had passed Germany as the world's biggest wind-energy generator (see The Week: Plugging Into Renewable Energy). Germany still wears the crown for having the most installed wind-power capacity, but the United States generated more wind power due to stronger winds.

AWEA expects the U.S. wind industry to reach a total capacity of about 24.3 gigawatts by the year's end.

Such expansion would mark wind as one of the fastest-growing electricity sources in the nation, second only to natural gas, in terms of production capacity. Wind made up 35 percent of the total electricity capacity installed in 2007, according to AWEA.

But capacity doesn't equal production. Wind power only provides about 1.5 percent of the nation's electricity.

The U.S. Department of Energy in May forecast that wind power could reach 20 percent of the nation's power supply by 2030.

AWEA said it is concerned that wind power might not realize its full potential if the federal government does not extend a production tax credit, which is set to expire at the end of this year.

The credit pays 2 cents per kilowatt-hour of wind electricity generated from utility-scale wind projects.

China also is attracting more wind power. On Wednesday, Canadian greentech project developer Global 8 Environmental Technologies said it would form a joint venture with China Tong Liao Baolong New Energy Ltd. to build more wind farms in the Asian country.

The two companies plan to build a research center focused on converting the wind blowing through the Tongliao region of China into energy.

The new company will be called Tong Liao Wind Energy Production Ltd. The venture hopes to develop $1 billion of wind farms with the capacity to generate a total of 1 gigawatt of electricity annually.

The first phase of the project calls for 33 wind turbines with an annual capacity of 49.5 megawatts, according to Global 8.

China ranks fifth in the world when it comes to installed wind-energy capacity, according to the council, with more than 6 gigawatts installed by the end of 2007.

The country holds the potential to lead the world in wind-energy development, according to the Global Wind Energy Council. China's installed wind-power capacity could reach 122 gigawatts by 2020, the council predicted in a 2007 study.

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This article has 7 comments:

  •  
    Sep 04 11:55 AM
    Go wind.
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 04 02:16 PM
    The achiles heel of wind and solar power is a cloudy day with no wind requiring back up power generation capable of filling the void. This aspect is not talked about when the economics of green power is discussed. It does make sense when the product of the electricity can be stored ie. desalination. Presently, there is not an economic solution to storing electricity.
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 04 10:21 PM
    A good combo of wind, solar and geothermal sounds reasonable to me.... But we need to do something about our grid in order to move electricity around as it is needed.... Course, it's much more fun blowing holes in foreign countries and leaving the bill for our children than to actually work on our infrastructure.

    jegan
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 05 11:24 AM
    Great, but when you say "can generate 20 GW's" I believe you mean the theoretical amount, not the amount considering the wind stops blowing sometimes. I believe that is quite a bit lower.

    Wind is awesome.
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 05 03:17 PM
    "Presently, there is not an economic solution to storing electricity. " Storing it is just as simple as making it. Don't let the "fossil fuel" PR machine fool you. Giant flywheels made by Beacon Power (BCON) can spin holding stored energy almost indefinitely with almost no loss of energy. Put a giant weight on a circular, zero friction, mag-lev track and send it spinning ...voila, power whenever you need it.
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 05 03:20 PM
    By the way. How many times does it need to double before wind provides all the power in the US? Only six times. I'll bet the next "double" comes in less than two years.
    Reply
  •  
    Oct 01 12:47 PM
    paul, You are on to something when you say "desalination&quo... when it comes to balancing the bursty nature of solar and wind. I would like to add "pumping desalinated water inland, then into water towers" and "charging plug-in-hybrids". Going forward there are going to be multiple ways to balance uneven electricity generation including hourly rate changes that businesses can adjust to. And, new ways to store the energy like flywheel, new batteries, and maybe electrolysis of water into hydrogen during the day then fuel-cell electricity generation at night.

    We are in the very early stage of the alternate energy revolution and there are many promising technologies in development. We've neglected investment in alternate energy for so long that basic technology has greatly advanced without it being applied to alternate energy. In many areas, like flywheel technology and solar concentrating, materials technology has greatly advanced without the investment to apply these new materials to these applications. Ausra has taken the stagnant (for about 20 years) trough solar concentrating system design and modernized it to greatly reduce materials and production cost. They say their system costs half of what the old trough systems cost. This could have been done many years ago, but it wasn’t – like many of the alternate energy technologies.

    I don't think energy storage will be the big bottleneck for solar and wind in the future. I think it will be the electricity transmission infrastructure. It is very expensive, controlled by the government, and has right-of-way issues. High-voltage direct-current (HVDC) technology is available (and in use in some places) now. It can efficiently carry electricity over 1000 miles. Thus the vast wind energy of the great plains can be carried to the all US cities west of and including Chicago. The vast solar energy of the Mojave desert can be delivered to all of California, Arizona, and Nevada, and maybe farther. But, it is going to be a slow, expensive, and political (hate congress!) process to build this infrastructure.
    Reply
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