Most Productive Quarter Yet for Wind Power

Posted on May 7, 2012 at 7:00 pm by JM Ashby

Good news, the U.S. wind-power industry grew by 52 percent in the first quarter of the year, and there are 8916 megawatts of wind plants currently under construction in 31 states.

The first quarter (Q1) of 2012 was the most productive yet for the US wind industry, installing 52% more megawatts than Q1 2011.

Developers are racing to get projects in the ground before the Production Tax Credit expires at the end of this year.

1695 megawatts (MW) of new wind capacity was installed in Q1 – 788 turbines in 17 states. The turbines were mostly manufactured in the US, says the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) in its first quarter market report. [...]

The last five years have been marked by unprecedented policy stability, and in response wind power has delivered,” says Denise Bode, AWEA CEO.

Domestically-produced energy built by Americans and developed with the aid of tax-credits

Everything about this says the Republicans should be ecstatic. That is if their own rhetoric about jobs, tax cuts, and domestic energy are to be believed. But they aren’t, because wind energy is the stuff of socialists and hippies like Al Gore. Did you know Al Gore is fat? Also — wind turbines might spoil the view from Donald Trump’s golf resort and Chris Christie’s back yard.

Fortunately for the rest of us, the Obama Administration is taking the first meaningful steps to gain energy independence following decades of promises from previous presidents.

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  • agrazingmoose

    Also, Al Gore has a big house.

    Drink!

    • D_C_Wilson

      And he’s fat!

  • Treading_Water

    But…but… but…

    Wind turbines kill birds, and killing birds is teh worst thing evah! It’s not like the petroleum industry is harmful to the environment, the economy, and world peace.

    • D_C_Wilson

      Plus, they’re so much uglier than those coal burning plants belching smoke into the air.

  • West_of_the_Cascades

    No offense, JM, but you evidently have no idea what you’re talking about when you make snarky jokes about the turbines “spoiling the view” — industrial-scale wind energy development has profound environmental effects if the projects are located in the wrong place. Back East, they’re not trying to put these massive wind developments smack on top of some of the last, best habitat for species like sage-grouse, Mexican freetail bats, Golden Eagles, and desert tortoises. Renewable energy development on public lands in the West has been a free-for-all with companies like Duke Energy and BP greenwashing themselves by installing a little renewable power capacity in their still-fossil-fuel dominated portfolio.

    Just falling all over ourselves to build huge renewable energy projects as fast as we can without addressing conservation and reduction of our total energy consumption (and thereby allowing ourselves to pretend that we can forever keep using energy profligately), and by keeping the same model of huge-scale generation with dozens or hundreds of miles of new electricity transmission means that we never, ever will get to a condition where we are distributing generation and building solar panels atop houses and warehouses and micro-generating power from small wind turbines in urban or suburban areas.

    It’s simply not an “either-or” choice — killing birds is a pretty damned bad thing. If we’re pretending that we are putting up renewable energy to avoid some future climate catastrophe, we need to stop and ask whether the harm we’re doing in the short term may lead to some bird or bat species not being around when we have “saved” the planet in the long run. And to the extent we’re not facing these questions honestly (as it’s clear we are NOT facing these questions honestly, if this post and the “killing birds is the worst thing evah” comment are representative), we’re putting ideology (“Green Energy is Green And Good”) over what science is actually telling us about the effects of these projects.

    We need to cut down on all of our power usage — simply substituting one horribly damaging source of energy for another that has its own downsides (particularly localized downsides if built in the wrong places) doesn’t address the fundamental need to change the model of how our society consumes energy.

    • JMAshby

      Really?

      It was Donald Trump and Chris Christie who complained about it spoiling their view, and it had nothing to do with dead birds. They simply didn’t want to see turbines on the horizon. Their words, not mine.

      As for dead birds, I’ll take a “saved” planet over them, and given our national history, and the way in which the cards are stacked against it, we’re fortunate to be getting ANY alternative energy. And the last time I checked, fossil fuels lead to far more deaths, including human deaths, than wind turbines.

      Conflating fossil fuels with wind-power as “horribly damaging” is utterly nonsensical.

      I wonder what the residents of the gulf coast would say to that.

    • trgahan

      Wow, I’ll have to make sure to tell all the renewable energy developers I work with about the “free for all” they are having on federal lands in the western US. Duke and BP alternative are by far not the only ones in the game and they are by no means “green washing.”
      Yeah, transmission lines suck, but renewable energy has finally led to investment into the most outdated and inefficient portions of our entire energy industry: electric transmission. Most of the US’s power grid averages 80 years in age. Thomas Edison could fix most parts of our grid himself if it were to break.
      In the southwest, solar has already been scaled to smaller farms designed to power specific subdivisions and just about every large roofed commercial building has panels on it. Geothermal HV/AC is being applied to public housing developments because it lowers to cost of ownership to the municipalities (read: lower taxes).
      As for avian deaths from wind farms, studying of flight paths, roosting locations, and turbine placement has lowered bat and raptor deaths by as much as 80%. Sage grouse is losing 100 times more habitat to natural gas wells and coal mines than wind turbines. Desert tortoise has killed more solar projects since 2009 than solar projects have killed desert tortoise.
      There are still problems with and impacts from renewable energy generation, but it is a huge step in the right direction. Yes, we do need, as a nation, to focus on conservation and efficiency. All the IPads, Smart phones, and flat screen TV’s that suck twice the energy as their earlier versions of the technology aren’t helping. But the impacts of renewables are nothing compared to fossil fuels.

  • BadSaratoga

    According to

    http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=97&t=3

    In 2010, the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer was 11,496 kWh, an average of 958 kilowatthours (kWh) per month.

    So, One MW (Mega Watt) is a million watts. That is a measure of Power.
    One MWh (Mega Watt Hour) is a million watts of power applied over the period of an hour. This is the actual Energy used over time.

    There are 8766 hours in 1 year.

    When all 8916 megawatts of wind plants are online and if they are operating at full capacity for 1 year (8766 hours), they could produce 8916 MWh of energy (each hour) or 78,158×10^6 Watt-Hours per year (est.) That would be 78,158 Billion Wh.

    If the US home uses an average of 11,496 kWh per year, then I estimate that the U.S. wind-power industry has potential to power 6,798,682 homes That’s 6.8 Million homes folks.

    According to:

    http://www.census.gov/population/projections/nation/hh-fam/table1n.txt

    There were about 114 Million households in 2010. The amount of wind power we’ll have soon will take care of almost 6% of US homes. That’s a pretty damn good trend going forward.

    Thanks President Obama! Clean Energy Rocks Ass!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=663669914 Sean Richardson

    “Fortunately for the rest of us, the Obama Administration is taking the first meaningful steps to gain energy independence”

    As loath as I am to do this, being fair, the thing you’re quoting says “The last five years have been marked by unprecedented policy stability,” which means that – shudder – Bush deserves some sort of credit for the first steps.

    Now I need to take a shower.