The US ranks second in installed capacity in the world, according to two reports released by the Department of Energy (DOE).
After modest growth in 2013, total installed wind power capacity in the USA now stands at 61GW, which meets nearly 4.5 percent of electricity demand in an average year, according to the 2013 Wind Technologies Market Report, released by the Energy Department and its Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The report also found that wind energy prices – particularly in the Interior region of the USA–are at an all-time low, with utilities selecting wind as a cost-saving option.
In total, US turbines in distributed applications, which accounted for more than 80 per cent of all wind turbines installed in the USA last year, reached a cumulative installed capacity of more than 842MW–enough to power 120,000 average American homes–according to the 2013 Distributed Wind Market Report, also released by the Energy Department and its Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. This capacity is supplied by roughly 72,000 turbines across all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. In fact, a total of 14 states, including Iowa, Nevada and California, among others, now each have more than 10MW of distributed wind capacity.