The American Wind Energy Association has published its quarterly market report for the US wind industry. It reveals that while there was very slow growth for the first three quarters of 2013, a lot of groundwork was being laid, leading to the commencement of construction in the fourth quarter to the tune of 10,900 megawatts. Adding this to the works commenced earlier in 2013, the total comes out at around 12,000 megawatts for the year.
The AWEA CEO is Tom Kiernan. In a statement issued this week he said:
“Our current growth demonstrates how powerful the tax credit is at incentivizing investment in wind energy. Now it’s up to Congress to ensure that growth continues by extending this highly successful policy.”
The AWEA used the news to promote a retroactive extension of the production tax credit for wind, which expired at the end of 2013.
It’s not surprising that there was such a rush to launch developments before 1 January 2014. It was almost certainly driven by the 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour production credit. The law requires projects to be under development before the end of the year in order to qualify for the credit. Dividends are then paid for the first ten years of a wind farm’s operation.
The same thing happened in 2012. Developers in that year also rushed to get projects into service before the end of the year, as the then-expiring law required. Installed capacity in 2012 was a record- over 13,000 megawatts. This seemingly exhausted the industry because, in the whole of 2013, only just over 1,000 megawatts went into operation.
Looking at the overall total, the US now has just over 61,000 megawatts, enough to provide power to over 15 million homes. Upon completion of the projects under construction, that latter figure would increase to 18.5 million homes.
The states with the highest wind power generation are Texas (by a long chalk) and then Iowa.
