A new report from the Department of Energy details that 225 gigawatts of wind power are in the planning phases, thirteen times more than currently installed and far more than the natural gas and coal plants on the drawing board.
Ryan Wiser, a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a co-author of the report, called the increase in wind projects "extraordinary," including the 5.3 gigawatts of wind installed during 2007, which represented 35 percent of the total new capacity added to the grid last year.
What's driving the surge? Wind is cost-competitive with fossil fuels and comes without the risk of climate change legislation making its fuel more expensive to use.
"Wind costs and prices are on the rise, but fossil generation costs are also increasing," Wiser emailed Wired.com. "The end result is that wind remains competitive with fossil [fuel] generation."
Lots of new power sources will have to come online over the next few decades to replace the coal plants that were built after World War II and that will reach the end of their lifespans over the next couple decades. Wind is looking like it will be a major part of that mix. A separate DOE report released last month declared that wind could power 20 percent of the US grid by 2030.
But it is important to remember that unlike coal, natural, gas, hydro, or nuclear, wind is intermittent. That means that as the amount of wind on the nation's (passive, outdated) electric grid, it could create problems when demand is high and the wind isn't blowing. One solution is the peak load shaving provided by companies like Consumer Powerline, which contracts with large companies to shut down unnecessary facilities when the grid is running close to capacity.
In any case, the entire report -- the Annual Report on U.S. Wind Power Installation, Cost, and Performance Trends: 2007 (pdf) -- is available online, along with a Powerpoint summary (pdf), from which the slide above was drawn.
