It’s official. In 2012 wind energy became the number one source of new U.S. electricity generation for the first time, representing 43 percent of new power last year and accounting for $25 billion in new investment, according to the Energy Department. 13 gigawatts were added last year, representing enough capacity to power 15 million homes or as many homes as exist in California and Washington combined. Major wind power states remain South Dakota, Kansas and Iowa, where data center operators like Google have gone in search of clean power. These states are reaching wind power levels as high as 20 percent of total energy mix.
Much of this trend is being driven by improvements in wind turbine technology that includes longer, lighter blades. I believe Vestas and others will continue to push the envelope on wind turbine efficiency. The price of wind power under long term power purchase agreements is hitting 4 cents per kilowatt hour, a very competitive benchmark.
One area of interest has been the potential for distributed wind power. We hear more about distributed solar, but there remains reasonable growth in distributed wind as a means to supply power to local grids, businesses and communities. Distributed wind can be trickier because you can’t just throw some solar panels on your roof, but if utilities become more open minded about distributing their power generation, we might see smaller wind power deployments across the grid.