According to two reports released by the Energy Department, the U.S. wind energy industry continued growing at an impressive rate in 2014. According to the 2014 Wind Technologies Market Report released by the US Energy Department and its Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, total installed wind power capacity in the USA grew at a rate of eight per cent in 2014 and now stands at nearly 66GW and meets 4.9 per cent of end-use electricity demand in an average year.
The report also finds that wind energy prices are at an all-time low and are competitive with wholesale power prices and traditional power sources across many areas of the USA. A new trend identified by the report shows utility-scale turbines with larger rotors designed for lower wind speeds have been increasingly deployed across the country in 2014. The findings also suggest that the success of the US wind industry has had a ripple effect on the American economy, supporting 73,000 jobs related to development, siting, manufacturing, transportation, and other industries, an increase of 22,500 jobs from 2013 to 2014.
Distributed wind market report
In total, U.S. turbines in distributed applications reached a cumulative installed capacity of more than 906 megawatts (MW)–enough to power more than 168,000 average American homes–according to the 2014 Distributed Wind Market Report, also released today by the Energy Department and its Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. This capacity comes from roughly 74,000 turbines installed across all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. As shown in the report, America's distributed wind energy industry supports a growing domestic industrial base. U.S.-based small wind turbine manufacturers claimed another strong year of exports to countries across the globe, accounting for nearly 80 per cent of total sales worldwide.
