Washington, Alaska far outpace Oregon in new wind power projects

Microsoft’s successful integration of wind power into its data center technology has shown that it can be done-and what’s more, it can be done efficiently and rather quickly.

Renewables are a hot topic in the field of energy production in the United States, and now could be a smart time to start investing.

“We believe this product offers an outstanding alternative to the wind and solar energy industry”. After topping out at almost $70/MWh for PPAs executed in 2009, the national average levelized price of wind PPAs that were signed in 2014 fell to around $23.5/MWh nationwide – a new low, but admittedly the price is focused on a sample of projects that largely hail from the lowest-priced Interior region of the U.S.

Between 1850 and 1970, more than 6 million small wind turbines were installed in the U.S. alone, primarily for water pumping. It also 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 2.35 cents per kilowatt hour, the lowest it has ever been.

Harnessing offshore wind power has been an energy issue since the first wind project was installed off the coast of Denmark in 1991.

With new low-cost, high performance wind turbines, the South has become the new frontier for the wind industry.

According to the report, wind energy in the U.S.is now at 66 gigawatts of installed capacity, providing roughly 5 percent of total U.S. electricity demand. Those operations included some 74,000 turbines in all 50 states and two territories.

U.S. Power Secretary Ernest Moniz stated in a press release the federal government’s findings present wind energy is rising as a serious element of the nation’s power combine.

Berkeley Lab’s contributions to this report were funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Wind power now represents nearly a quarter of all new electric-generating ventures in 2014. Compared with traditional, centralized power plants, distributed wind energy installations supply power directly to the local grid near homes, farms, businesses, and communities. Simply put: the higher the blades, the stronger the wind, and the more energy the turbine can produce.

A new emphasis on utility-scale turbines with larger rotors designed for lower wind speeds has also been observed in 2014.

The 2014 installed capacity was 4,854 MW, with project investment at $8.3 billion.