Renewable Energy: America's Whirlwind Rise

America is a global leader in harvesting wind to generate renewable energy, a fact overlooked by the media.   About 57,000 wind turbines are operating in 41 states, producing more than 100 gigawatts, enough to power 32 million homes.  And wind is blowing away the other green competition.

The United States ranks second in the world behind only China.  Six of the largest ten onshore wind farms are based in America.  The biggest is the Alta Wind Energy Centre in California, near Los Angeles in the Tehachapi Pass, which ranks second worldwide with a capacity of 1,548 megawatts.

The state of Texas, however, produces the most wind energy, accounting for 25% of all U.S. wind power.  Texas generates more than 25 other states combined.  Latest figures from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) estimate wind energy provides 18.9% of state's electricity production.

The largest wind facility is the Roscoe Wind Farm, situated 45 miles southwest of Abilene in West Texas, which churns out 781.5 megawatts from its 627 wind turbines. Further south the newer Los Vientos Wind Farm in the Rio Grande Valley soon will be capable of generating 910 megawatts.

The economic impact in Texas is significant.  Direct wind industry jobs in 2018 reached 26,000. Capital investment in wind projects soared to $46.5 billion.  Annual state of local tax payments by wind projects rose to $237 million, according to AWEA research.

Despite the glowing progress, wind energy is not without critics.  Environmentalists complain the turbines are a threat to wildlife, noisy and create visual pollution.  The Audubon Society estimates from 140,000 to 328,000 birds are killed annually in North America by wind turbine blades.

I guess no one informed these groups that every type of renewable energy has downsides.  Producing solar cells, for example,  produces greenhouse gas emissions.  There are trade offs with every energy source, even those sanctified as green.

So how is electricity transported from wind turbines to communities? Electricity produced by wind is dispatched to the consumer via a series of transmission and distribution networks.  Each component of the network alters the voltage of the electricity as it is zips along the power grid.

At the center of this system are wind turbines soaring as high as 345-feet and costing $3-to-$5 million.  The machines are mechanically simple, using rotor blades, a gearbox and an electrical generator.  Blades are made of fiberglass and balsa wood, often strengthened with carbon fiber.

New technologies have enabled the industry to improve productivity by 35% since 1988.  These advancements have sparked steep cost declines for the propagation of wind energy. These innovations have also improved reliability and increased capacity of the turbines.

One of the major improvements is employing 3-D printing to create a full size representation of the blade design, speeding up the manufacturing process.  Typically, the blades are 116-feet in length, but in an effort to generate more energy there is a push to supersize the rotors and blades.

General Electric, the largest wind turbine manufacturer in the U.S., is developing onshore turbine towers that stretch to 499 feet, longer than a football field.  The blades in production would be a mammoth 351-feet, the largest onshore blade available.  That will drive up the capacity factor 63%.

The U.S. Department of Energy reports that wind energy costs have nosedived from 55-cents per kilowatt hour (kwh) in 1980 to less than three cents per kwh today.  That makes wind energy four times cheaper than solar and only hydroelectric power can be produced more efficiently.

Today wind power accounts for about eight percent of the electricity in America.  Solar is nearly 2 percent. U.S. Energy Information Association statistics show natural gas generates 35.2%, followed by coal (27.5%) and nuclear (19.4%).  Hydroelectric yields 7%, but its share is declining.

Of these forms of energy, wind is by far the fastest growing source. An estimated 200 new large projects are underway in the nation. The AWEA projects that harnessing the wind will allow the nascent industry to account for 20% of all electricity generation in America by 2030.

However, the nation cannot rely totally on wind for its electricity.  The AWEA calculated that the country would need 1.26 million wind turbines to power every home and business.  That means other forms of renewable energy will be needed to totally reduce carbon emissions.

The vision for the electric grid of the future includes harnessing fusion, a  nuclear reaction that powers the sun and the stars.  Advances in computing and materials have spawned promising experiments that may allow the tapping of this limitless energy. But much work remains.

Another futuristic dream of scientists is employing a modular spacecraft to collect sunlight, convert it to electric power and then wirelessly transmit it to a steerable beam.  Japan and China are both leading the global effort to build a solar power station positioned in the Earth's orbit.

These plans may sound far fetched to skeptics, but it wasn't too many years ago that critics believed that wind power was a pipe dream.  The energy in the scientific and business communities is laser focused on the issue of renewable power.  A revolution is coming faster than most imagine.

Meanwhile, as the U.S. continues to wean itself from natural gas and coal, the country cannot turn its back on those resources to power communities, businesses and the economy.  Progress is being made on renewable energy, however, that is no reason to pull the plug today on other energy sources.