Wind power in the United States is a branch of the energy industry that has expanded rapidly in recent years . For calendar year 2016, wind power generation in the United States reached 226.5 terawatt · hour (TW·h), accounting for 5.55% of all electricity generation.
As of January 2017, wind power in the United States was rated at 82,183 MW. This capacity is surpassed only by the People’s Republic of China and the European Union. By far the largest increase in wind power capacity was in 2012, when 11,895 MW of wind turbines were installed, accounting for 26.5% of new installed capacity.
In 2016, Nebraska became the 18th state to have installed more than 1,000 MW of wind power capacity. At the end of 2016, Texas, with more than 20,000 MW of capacity, had the largest installed wind power capacity of any U.S. state. Texas also has more capacity under construction than any other state has currently installed. The state with the highest percentage of wind power is Iowa. North Dakota is the state with the most wind energy per capita. The Alta Wind Energy Center in California is the largest wind farm in the United States, with a capacity of 1,548 MW. GE Energy is the largest domestic wind engine manufacturer in the United States.
Map of installed wind turbines in the United States by state at the end of 2016.
The top five by percentage of wind power generation in 2016 are：
Iowa (36.6%)
South Dakota (30.3%)
Kansas (29.6%)
Oklahoma (25.1%)
North Dakota (21.5%)
From 1974 to the mid-1980s, the U.S. government worked with industry to advance the technology that made large commercial wind turbines possible. Under funding from the National Science Foundation and later the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), a utility-electric scale wind turbine industry was created in the United States, developing a range of NASA wind turbines. A total of 13 test wind turbines were invested in the four main wind turbine designs. This research and development program was a precursor to many of the multi-megawatt turbine technologies in use today, including: steel tube towers, variable speed generators, composite blade materials, partial span pitch control, and aerodynamic, structural, and acoustic engineering design capabilities.
As of 2017, the United States had more than 82 GW of installed wind power capacity
Post time: Aug-22-2023