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WASHINGTON, DC, US, November 9, 2005 (Refocus Weekly) The U.S. wind energy industry will install 2,500 MW of new turbines this year, setting a record that will also help to lower heating and electric costs by reducing demand for natural gas.
The cumulative total of U.S. installed wind capacity could exceed 9,200 MW by the end of this year, meeting demand from 2.4 million homes, says the American Wind Energy Association in its third quarter market report. That capacity would avoid the combustion of half a billion cubic feet of natural gas each day, out of the country’s daily consumption of 13 Bcf/day.
By the end of this year, wind will reduce natural gas use for power generation by 4% to 5% across the country. Burning fossil fuels to generate electricity emits one-third of the U.S. greenhouse gases, and the wind turbines installed this year alone will offset the emission of 7 billion pounds of CO2, equivalent to keeping 500,000 SUVs off the road.
“Wind power’s rapid growth provides what is potentially the quickest and best supply-side option to ease the natural gas shortage,” says executive director Randall Swisher. “The wind power industry is stepping up to provide the U.S. with a significant amount of its power needs in this time of uncertainty.”
The industry is hopeful that the momentum will continue as a result of the extension by the federal Congress of the wind production tax credit until the end of 2007.
The growth in wind power construction comes as customers are facing increases for electricity and natural gas rates due to the supply shortage of gas, with winter prices projected to be double the average price of last year. Wind provides a “hedge against rising energy costs because wind energy production is immune from fuel price spikes,” AWEA explains, and because prices at the margin are volatile and sensitive to supply and demand pressures, each unit of natural gas that is conserved by generation from wind turbines “helps shave down costs even further in times of crunch.”
Windfarms bring “new jobs, rural economic development, and tax revenues to cash-strapped states without creating any of the harmful side-effects associated with conventional power generation,” and AWEA says another benefit is that windfarms can be permitted and built quickly, in less than two years compared with drilling new gas fields or constructing LNG terminals.
AWEA projects that 14,000 MW of wind capacity could be part of the generation supply mix by the end of 2007, producing the equivalent of 0.85 Bcf/day of natural gas.
There are 58 wind projects under construction now, including the 221 MW Horse Hollow windfarm in Texas and the 198 MW Maple Ridge facility in New York. The leading supplier is GE Wind with 1,017 turbines among the known projects, well ahead of second-place Vestas with 478 turbines, and Texas, Oklahoma and New York are the three leading states for wind instillations this year.
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