Wind power has not kept pace with solar and has had bad luck with PR recently (remember the eagles?), but construction activity is ramping up, which bodes well for the months ahead, said SNL, a firm specializing in energy company research, on Thursday.
Wind installations limped through 2013, their lowest year since 2004, SNL said. Only 612 megawatts of wind capacity were added to the grid last year.
Compare that to solar: in the third quarter alone, the solar industry added 930 megawatts of new photovoltaic capacity, a 35% increase over the year-ago quarter. The Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group, expects 2013 to be a record year for solar, with more than 5,000 megawatts of new solar capacity in both utility-scale solar installations and residential installations. Wind power hopes to play catch up — 5,727 megawatts of wind capacity is under construction, and wind has some history in its favor: Wind net generation was the majority of total renewable energy net generation growth in the U.S. between 2008 and 2012, SNL said. And some wind players are hoping to take a page from solar and market their wares to homeowners. United Wind has started a lease program to bring smaller-scale wind turbines to homes and businesses, taking care of permits, financing, and installation. United Wind’s chief executive Russell Tencer said space is a constraint for “small wind,” with your installation typically going in mostly rural communities where property owners have the space for the setup — usually a 100-foot tower, and a rotor with a diameter between 20 to 40 feet.
Utility-scale wind projects in 2013 included Pheasant Run Wind Farm in Michigan, with a second phase expected to come on line next month. The largest under-construction U.S. wind project, which does not yet have a date to start producing power, is the 800-megawatt project Mescalero Ridge Wind in Chaves County, New Mexico, owned by Caithness Energy LLC. Berkshire Hathaway’s BRK.A BRK.B Mid-American Energy Holdings project, 501-megawatts of Highland Wind in Iowa, is the second largest, expected to come on line in 2015. How about those eagles (and other birds, bats, etc)? Wind might be bad news for them, but not for home prices, according to this The Wall Street Journal article. In some cases, the announcement of a new wind farm may have contributed to a drop in some home prices, but after construction was completed, prices appeared unaffected, the newspaper said, citing a study by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the University of Connecticut released earlier this month. By Claudia Assis- Yahoo Environment
