After years of slow growth, wind power will sprint ahead with the deployment of 40,000 new wind turbines across North America by the year 2015, according to a new predictive report out of cleantech analysis firm Pike Research. The sector will be serving up big economic opportunities in the next several years as the government champions wind as the most feasible source of renewable energy, and as older, first-generation turbines are replaced (about 45 percent of turbine sales will be replacements for older models).
That said, the market probably won't pick up the pace until 2011, when government and private sources of funding are fully absorbed and purposed. In the last year, 8 gigawatts-worth of wind turbines have been installed in the U.S. -- pushing its total to 25 gigawatts, enough to power as many as 8 million homes. This is very promising considering the state of the economy, which had stalled several major wind projects. Now that the market has thawed, these developments and others are prepped to take off.
The Pike report comes out four days after Texas saw the completion of the world's largest wind farm -- the 627 turbine-strong Roscoe Wind Complex, which generates 781.5 megawatts (enough power about 230,000 homes). Located 220 miles outside of Dallas, about 300 miles south of where Pickens had staked out his wind farm, the 100,000 acre complex makes Texas the undisputed leader in U.S. windpower. Interestingly, the facility was built by a German company, E.ON Climate and Renewables, which also owns and runs several other large farms in west Texas.
More are planned for the region, contingent on the construction of new transmission lines to heavily populated areas. This lack has posed a major challenge to the spread of wind power, with even Texas oilman-turned-renewables-evangelist T. Boone Pickens scrapping plans for a 687 turbine, 200,000 acre-farm after investing $2 billion. Once transmission problems are solved there and elsewhere, wind should grow that much faster.
Another wind milestone occurred late last week. Duke Energy turned on two major wind-powered electricity plants in Pennsylvania and Wyoming. As one of the largest and most influential utilities in the U.S., Duke has provided an example to many others in its adoption of Smart Grid equipment and other efficiency initiatives. Its increasing reliance on wind could become another precedent. Duke's two new wind plants in Pittsburgh and Cheyenne, Wyo. have capacities of 70 megawatts and 42 megawatts respectively. The utility also recently signed a contract with Siemens Energy for wind-turbines for a new 200-megawatt plant near Casper, Wyo.
In the past month, the Treasury Department has given out over $1 billion in cash awards to 27 clean energy companies, with the vast majority of them going to wind operations. Solar and biofuel companies came in a distant second and third. Combining this progress with San Francisco's recent announcement that wind will lead its charge toward carbon neutrality by 2030, it looks like investors and startups alike should anticipate rapid growth in this sector -- that 40,000 marker shouldn't be too hard to hit in five years.
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