Wind Blows Hard
At the April 2009 Gulf Coast Power Generation Association annual meeting, Denise Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), wowed the 400-plus audience with data and AWEA’s political agenda. In January 2009, more than 25,000 MW of wind generation was operational in the U.S. (Figure 2). The rate of installation has been breathtaking during the past few years: 5,329 MW in 2007 and 8,300 MW in 2008. AWEA’s goal: to generate 20% of the nation’s energy from wind turbines by 2030 (Figure 3).
2. U.S. wind power capacity (MW). Source: American Wind Energy Association
3. Double your pleasure. Wind turbine capacity in the U.S. has doubled in the past three years. The American Wind Energy Association believes the wind industry can provide 20% of the nation’s energy by 2030. Source: American Wind Energy Association
Meeting AWEA’s ambitious goal will require substantial direct investment and indirect subsidies. The Economic Stimulus Bill signed into law on February 13, 2009, included several provisions that appear to provide those investments and subsidies.
At the Platts Global Market Conference, Charles Turlinski of Horizon Wind Energy nicely summarized the bill’s effect on wind power development in a slide whose content is displayed here in the table. A thorough discussion of the tax credit options was presented in POWER last month ("Renewable Project Finance Options: ITC, PTC, or Cash Grant?" May 2009).
Increasing investment. The Economic Stimulus Bill has provided the industry with additional incentives for wind project development. Source: Horizon Wind Energy
With such generous subsidies for wind power, many of the experts at these conferences are predicting that more than half of the generation capacity added in the U.S. during the next three years will be from wind. But Ross McCracken of Platts cautioned that the excitement over wind energy downplays the problems with having such a high fraction of wind generation on the grid.
Where does this leave the producers of fossil-fired generation, who are exposed to fuel commodity risk and potential carbon taxes? Where will the investment come from for the fossil fuel infrastructure needed to provide the reserve capacity for wind generation? Will the industry morph so that wind generation developers and aggregators include gas turbine capacity within their projects to cover the intermittency of wind generation?
As with most energy conferences this year, more questions were asked than were answered.
—Mark Axford (maxford@attglobal.net) is a principal of Axford Turbine Consultants LLC and is a POWER contributing editor.
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