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Analysis: Wind power taking off in U.S.
Analysis: Wind power taking off in U.S.
Business, Portland Press Herald
8/10/2015
Two reports suggest that wind is being installed at a rapid rate, that its costs are plummeting, that its technologies are advancing, and that it is creating a growing number of jobs.
Cape Wind Power Farm
....Wind energy in the U.S. is now at 66 gigawatts of installed capacity, according to the report – providing roughly 5 percent of total U.S. electricity demand. Sixty-six gigawatts is enough electricity to power 17.5 million homes (a gigawatt is a billion watts). And, says Jose Zayas, who heads the wind and water power technologies office at the Energy Department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, 13 more gigawatts are now “in the construction phase” and set to come online by 2016.
For reference, in 2012, the U.S. had 1063 gigawatts of total installed electricity capacity, according to the Energy Information Administration. “It really dispels some of the past myths that you cannot have significant amounts of wind energy in the system – a variable source in the system – without really affecting the overall efficiency,” says Zayas. In the meantime, wind now provides 73,000 jobs, the new report finds. And most striking, it found that the wholesale cost of wind energy – bought under a “power purchasing agreement,” or PPA, in which a utility or company buys power from a wind farm under a long term contract – is now just 2.35 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s the lowest it has ever been....
...snip...
It’s all part of a bigger picture in which since 2007, a third of new electricity generating capacity in the U.S. has been from wind. The Department of Energy has envisioned the possibility of getting fully 20 percent of the U.S.’s electricity from wind by 2030.
A second Energy Department report released Monday, by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, focuses on the distributed wind energy market – which, the report says, has now nearly reached a single gigawatt of installed capacity. Distributed wind, like distributed solar, refers to wind energy – typically just one or two turbines – installed by private individuals or companies to allow them to generate a portion of the electricity they need onsite, rather than having to buy it from a utility company. Anheuser-Busch, for instance, has now installed two wind turbines at its Northern California Fairfield brewery.
http://www.pressherald.com/2015/08/10/department-of-energy-reports-says-wind-power-installations-booming/
Business, Portland Press Herald
8/10/2015
Two reports suggest that wind is being installed at a rapid rate, that its costs are plummeting, that its technologies are advancing, and that it is creating a growing number of jobs.
Cape Wind Power Farm
....Wind energy in the U.S. is now at 66 gigawatts of installed capacity, according to the report – providing roughly 5 percent of total U.S. electricity demand. Sixty-six gigawatts is enough electricity to power 17.5 million homes (a gigawatt is a billion watts). And, says Jose Zayas, who heads the wind and water power technologies office at the Energy Department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, 13 more gigawatts are now “in the construction phase” and set to come online by 2016.
For reference, in 2012, the U.S. had 1063 gigawatts of total installed electricity capacity, according to the Energy Information Administration. “It really dispels some of the past myths that you cannot have significant amounts of wind energy in the system – a variable source in the system – without really affecting the overall efficiency,” says Zayas. In the meantime, wind now provides 73,000 jobs, the new report finds. And most striking, it found that the wholesale cost of wind energy – bought under a “power purchasing agreement,” or PPA, in which a utility or company buys power from a wind farm under a long term contract – is now just 2.35 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s the lowest it has ever been....
...snip...
It’s all part of a bigger picture in which since 2007, a third of new electricity generating capacity in the U.S. has been from wind. The Department of Energy has envisioned the possibility of getting fully 20 percent of the U.S.’s electricity from wind by 2030.
A second Energy Department report released Monday, by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, focuses on the distributed wind energy market – which, the report says, has now nearly reached a single gigawatt of installed capacity. Distributed wind, like distributed solar, refers to wind energy – typically just one or two turbines – installed by private individuals or companies to allow them to generate a portion of the electricity they need onsite, rather than having to buy it from a utility company. Anheuser-Busch, for instance, has now installed two wind turbines at its Northern California Fairfield brewery.
http://www.pressherald.com/2015/08/10/department-of-energy-reports-says-wind-power-installations-booming/
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