"Understanding the Future of Sustainable Energy"

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About the Author

Wind electrical generation has become increasingly popular.  Large amounts of wind electric generation installations has been recently installed, with the number of installations continuing to increase .  Wind generation has been a favorable renewable alternative as wind electric generation is currently significantly cheaper than solar generation and cost competitive with gas turbine technology   on a cost per power basis. 

A major challenge of large scale wind generation is the intermittent nature of wind.  Wind can vary from hour to hour, day to day, and by seasons.  Further more, wind cannot be dispatched on demand.  Therefore, dispatchable electric generation (primarily from fossil fuels) must be kept in line in case the wind does not blow.  This redundancy makes it cost prohibitive to implement large percentage of wind generation without careful consideration to renewable grid integration.  Studies have indicated that about 20% wind generation of the total electric generation can be deployed easily.  Wind is a large renewable resource.  However, only limited amount of areas have the high wind velocities for economic wind generation. 

 For an atlas of renewable resources see: http://www.nrel.gov/gis/maps.html#resource_atlas.

U.S. Wind Resources (NREL: United States Atlas of Renewable Resources)