by Shane Henson — August 14, 2013—The United States continues to be one of the world’s largest and fastest growing wind markets, and in 2012, wind energy became the number one source of new U.S. electricity generation capacity for the first time, according to two new reports from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and two of its national laboratories.
The DOE’s report with its Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), 2012 Wind Technologies Market Report , details the latest trends in the U.S. wind power market. Last year, more than 13 gigawatts (GW) of new wind power capacity were added to the U.S. grid, nearly double the wind capacity deployed in 2011. This tremendous growth helped America’s total wind power capacity surpass 60 gigawatts at the end of 2012. That represents enough capacity to power more than 15 million homes each year, says the DOE. The country’s cumulative installed wind energy capacity has reportedly increased more than 22-fold since 2000.
The DOE also published a report with its Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) highlighting the strong growth in the U.S. distributed wind energy market: the 2012 Report on Wind Technologies in Distributed Applications . Compared to traditional, centralized power plants, distributed wind energy installations directly supply power to the local grid near homes, farms, businesses and communities— helping to improve grid reliability and efficiency. Turbines used in these applications can range in size from a few hundred watts to multi-megawatts, and can help power remote, off-grid homes and farms as well as local schools and manufacturing facilities, the DOE explains.
The DOE/PNNL report finds that distributed wind in the United States reached a 10-year cumulative installed capacity of more than 812 megawatts (MW) at the end of 2012—representing more than 69,000 units across all 50 states. Between 2011 and 2012, U.S. distributed wind capacity grew by 175 MW, with about 80 percent of this growth coming from utility-scale installations. At the state level, Iowa, Massachusetts, California and Wisconsin led the nation in new distributed wind power capacity in 2012. Over the past ten years, the U.S. distributed wind market has grown more than five-fold, the report notes.
