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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday August 12 2015, @10:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the whooooooooosh dept.

Nine states now generate more than 10 percent of their electricity from wind.

After years of uninterrupted success, wind power experienced a bit of a pause around the start of this decade. Prices for hardware reversed a decline and bounced upwards slightly, with installations dropping accordingly. But a new report from the Department of Energy shows that this bounce is now over. The price paid for wind-generated electricity has now reached an all-time low, and construction is bouncing back. Still, regulatory uncertainty may now be creating a boom/bust cycle for wind.

The report starts by reviewing the size of the wind market in the US. In 2014, it represented a quarter of the new additions to the US' generating capacity, a bit down from the average of 2007-2014, when it represented a third. Just under five GigaWatts were installed by the US, placing it third, and well behind China's 23GW. China now has nearly doubled the US 66GW of cumulative capacity.

Because of the US' excellent wind resources, however, it led the world in generating electricity last year. As a percentage of a country's total electricity generated by wind, the US ranked 15th, at roughly five percent. There are sharp regional differences however, with nine states generating more than double that percentage of their electricity using wind, led by Iowa, which generated 29 percent of its energy from the air.

The report expects the number of new wind farm installations to drop off because a federal production tax credit expired in 2014.


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  • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday August 12 2015, @01:49PM

    by LoRdTAW (3755) on Wednesday August 12 2015, @01:49PM (#221677) Journal

    You can buy small turbines but everyone I have looked at is woefully inadequate to generate a modest amount of power unless you are in a windstorm. They are advertised with very enticing power outputs like 1, 2, 3 or even 5kW. You start thinking, woah, I only need a fraction of that, the rest I sell to the grid! Then you realize you have to mount it on a pole with a height of at least 18 to 22 meters and the span of the blades is around 5 meters. In a steady breeze you are lucky if you will be getting over 500W. You need a storm to generate the rated output power. Most green vendors never reveal the power output graph which only starts to show serious output when the wind speed is around 20+MPH or 9-10 m/s. Look at average wind speed graphs for your region and you will see that a $10,000 5kW wind turbine is a crap investment unless you live in a very windy area which isn't very common. And even then it's still a crap investment because it a giant, ugly, mechanical pinwheel. Solar is so much easier to maintain.

    And as for full size turbines, lease your land to a wind farm. Otherwise I am sure full size, MW turbines will cost tens of millions including the installation.

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