24,300 MW: US Could Lead World in Installed Wind Capacity by End of 2008
by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY on 09. 4.08
photo: Thomas Merton
You’ve got to hand it to AWEA (the US wind industry trade association, in case you didn't know), they certainly do a good job of pumping up wind power. A bit over a month ago they announced that the US wind industry passed a milestone in terms of electricity generated from wind power over a year ahead of time, making the US the world’s number one wind power producer, and promised more details to come. Well, those details have arrived.
US Bests Germany For Wind Power Generation
In a press release, AWEA has announced that the United States now has 20,152 MW of installed wind power capacity and, while Germany currenly bests that by about 3,000 MW, the US actually generates more power from its capacity because of stronger wind speeds—though still doesn't say exactly how much electricity is actually generated. Furthermore, by the end of 2008 an additional 4,300 MW is expected to come online; at which point the US could best Germany in terms of power output as well as installed capacity.
Wind Power Still a Small Percentage of Overall Power Generation
While this rate of growth is substantial—there was 1000 MW of wind capacity in the US in 1985, 5000 MW in 2003, and 10,000 in 2006—AWEA doesn’t fail to point out that US wind capacity is still a very small percentage of overall electric generation (1.5%), and that there remains great potential to be tapped.
For those who live on comparisons: AWEA says current installed capacity in the US is sufficient to power 5.3 million average US homes, power a (potential) fleet of more than 1 million plug-in hybrid vehicles, generate a similar amount of power to 28.7 million tons of coal or 90 million barrels of oil.
:: American Wind Energy Association
Wind Power
USA is the Number One Wind Energy Producer
Wind Power Produces 123% of Residential Energy Demand in Rock Port, Missouri
United States Will Lead World for Third Straight Year in Annual Wind Power Installations
Right now, electricity accounts for about half our fossil fuel consumption. So we need about a 100-fold increase in renewables across the board to eliminate fossil fuel energy. Since wind has doubled in
Of course, it'll help if congress can extend the tax credits...
24,300 MW? That's about ... 500,000 Prius, if they are merely running on electricity. If each Prius runs only 2 hours a day, that's 6 million of them.
and we've only developed about 2% of the total resource:
http://blogs.edf.org/climateatlas/2008/07/22/less-than-2-of-total-us-wind-energy-has-been-developed/
Now we need however many TW of pumped-reservoir storage to allow us to level out the lulls in wind.
We can do it. I know we can. Just making sure everyone knows what will be required, if we really want all electricity to be renewable.
In the book at withouthotair.com, David MacKay, Physics PHD, looks at getting Britain off fossil fuels entirely (not just enough to match current electrical production). He finds it will require more change than most can imagine to do so. However, he finds they can come close. For instance, matching current electrical production in Britain with wind is possible without causing a revolt.
However, he takes some examples of wind production along with electrical usage, and finds that a great deal of energy storage would be required. It would be possible to drastically increase the number of pumped-water facilities (these already exist and pay for themselves) in order to dampen the swings. Also, of course, there would need to be grid upgrade and build-out.
I am guessing we'd need the same sort of huge build out over here.
Still nothing like the world's largest on a per capita basis. The US has a long, long way to go.
@ Anthony
The US has about a terawatt of installed capacity, 75% of which is fossil fuel based. That's 750 GW. Since wind has a capacity factor of about 33%, we'll need 2.25 TW of installed capacity to make up for that. So 100x more wind is exactly right (assuming no growth in demand). If current trends continue (160% more installed than the year before), we'll be there by 2018. It's optimistic to think that won't level off at some point, but I think this is sort of what Al Gore was talking about.
Year … MW
2003 … 5,000
2004 … 6,000
2005 … 7,500
2006 … 10,000
2007 … 15,000
2008 … 24,000
2009 … 38,400
2010 … 61,440
2011 … 98,304
2012 … 157,286
2013 … 251,658
2014 … 402,653
2015 … 644,245
2016 … 1,030,792
2017 … 1,649,267
2018 … 2,638,828
@bkydcmpr
Well, it's a start, but there are a billion cars on this planet, and demand is only increasing...
@ anderlan
I agree to do the change over in the timeframe required that it will require a sacrifice that no one is talking about. We've waited to long to do this the easy way.
Pumped water storage isn't the only option for baseload. There are lots of options: biogas, CSP with storage tanks of liquid sodium, wave, geothermal, and others. And in the USA, there's almost never a time it's calm across the entire wind corridor (1000m long) or cloudy over the entire SW USA, where CSP and PV plants will be located. So with a vast interconnected grid even intermittent sources like wind and solar can provide baseload electricity. A recent study showed as few as 8 interconnected windfarms can provide consistent electricity.
And at some point we'll have fusion, which is the ultimate baseload power plant.
@JSDreyer:
Conventional and nuclear base load power plants typically have a capacity factor between 70% and 80%. So you would need only about 1,7 TW of windpower to produce the same amount of electricity.
Things are looking great for the wind energy sector in the US. I hope this trend continues and hopefully someday all electricity will come from renewable.
@ Peiter,
That's true. I know nuke plants have a capacity factor of 90%, but I don't know about coal and NG plants. And even though we've got a terawatt of installed capacity, peak demand in 2006 was about 800 GW in July. Either way we need a heck of a lot more.
Demand will only go up slightly due to increased home power efficiencies and solar rooftops that will generate electricity. Many homes in my area are being built with 2 to 3kWh of capacity on their roofs which in conjunction with very efficient appliances and green building codes will virtually reduce the electricity consumption from the grid to zero. Some I know are installing double what they need so they can put electricity back onto the grid (we have net metering here) and that will add to the grid rather than take away from it. For example, one friend adds an average of 5kW/day to the grid, which adds up to around 1.8MW per year added back onto the grid. Now imagine if only 10 thousand homes did that per year. That would give you a total of 18 gigawatts of power back onto the grid each year.... and minus those homes from the grid at an average of 25kW/day, you get a total of 109GW back to the grid each year. Installed capacity is growing each year, and even condos like the one I live in will be installing capacity. We will start out with 37kW/hr capacity installed on top of our condo complex which will reduce our consumption by around 1/3. We'll probably install another 37kW/hr over the next few years filling up our roof and decreasing our consumption by 2/3. We hope to make up for the rest by using only the most efficient appliances and running black pipes over the roof right under the solar panels to absorb all the heat and put that back into our hot water tanks. We're still working on the design, but by 2015, we hope to be 100% off the grid.