Wind power in the United States is a branch of the energy industry, expanding quickly over the last several years. Construction of new wind power generation capacity in the fourth quarter of 2012 totaled 8,380 megawatts (MW) bringing the cumulative installed capacity to 60,007 MW. This capacity is exceeded only by China. For the 12 months until March 2013, the electricity produced from wind power in the United States amounted to 145.279 terawatt-hours, or 3.56% of all generated electrical energy.
New wind farms can produce electricity in the 5-8 cents per kWh range, making wind power more competitive with the cost of fossil fuel electricity generation. Fifteen states have installed over 1,000 MW of wind capacity, and a total of 39 states now have installed at least some utility-scale wind power, with Nevada the latest in the 3Q of 2012. Texas, with 12,212 MW of capacity, has the most installed wind power capacity of any U.S. state, followed by California and Iowa with 5,549 MW and 5,137 MW respectively. The Alta Wind Energy Center in California is the largest wind farm in the United States with a capacity of 1020 MW of power.
GE Energy is the largest domestic wind turbine manufacturer. In 2010, the wind power industry in the US received 13.4% ($4.986 billion) of all federal subsidies for electricity generation including 4.852 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
There were 10,312 MW across 30 states under construction in the second quarter of 2012 and 8,430 MW across 30 states and territories under construction in the third quarter of 2012, with less than 100 MW of new construction. The U.S. Department of Energy’s report 20% Wind Energy by 2030 envisioned that wind power could supply 20% of all U.S. electricity, which included a contribution of 4% from offshore wind power. In August 2011, a coalition of 24 governors asked the Obama administration to provide a more favorable business climate for the development of wind power. Near the end of 2012, the United States fiscal cliff undermined the wind industry because of an expiring 2.2₡/kWh tax credit. On January 1, 2013 the production tax credit was extended for another year.
Read more about Wind Power In The United States: Overview, National Trends, State Trends, Offshore Wind Power, Statistics, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words united states, wind, power, united and/or states:
“You may consider me presumptuous, gentlemen, but I claim to be a citizen of the United States, with all the qualifications of a voter. I can read the Constitution, I am possessed of two hundred and fifty dollars, and the last time I looked in the old family Bible I found I was over twenty-one years of age.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1816–1902)
“The wind had seized the tree and ha, and ha,
It held the shivering, the shaken limbs,
Then bathed its body in the leaping lake.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“It is only a short step from exaggerating what we can find in the world to exaggerating our power to remake the world. Expecting more novelty than there is, more greatness than there is, and more strangeness than there is, we imagine ourselves masters of a plastic universe. But a world we can shape to our will ... is a shapeless world.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“I do seriously believe that if we can measure among the States the benefits resulting from the preservation of the Union, the rebellious States have the larger share. It destroyed an institution that was their destruction. It opened the way for a commercial life that, if they will only embrace it and face the light, means to them a development that shall rival the best attainments of the greatest of our States.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)