News about Solar, Wind and alternative green power technologies

In accordance with a recent market research, U.S. Wind Power Markets and Strategies: 2010-2025 from IHS Emerging Energy Research, after breaking a record of capacity additions in the year 2009 – with 9.8 GW of wind projects set up – the U.S. wind markets is finding itself with the confrontation of a growth-constrained 2010 and an near-term market setting shaped with an increasing competition.

Nonetheless, based on the research’s prediction, with the propagation of encouraging federal and state policies, the U.S. wind industry is on the way to include more than 165 GW of new capacity by the year 2025, resulting in a total installed base of 200 GW. Research projects anywhere from 6.3-7.1 GW of wind could be installed in the year 2010, around 40 to 60 percent less than 2009 installations.

To place this growth number in context, the industry has gone through three years of record or near record growth at one go. In the year 2007 the U.S. installed 5244 MW while in the year 2008, the industry boosted again, by installing an extra 8300 MW, after the new record of 9800 MW in 2009. Growth was bound to slow down to a certain extent. However, what appears to be most amazing is the fact that there will be a fall in installs for the first time instead of a mere slowing of growth.

Keeping in line with what Matthew Kaplan, one of the research’s authors and an IHS leading analyst said, the year 2010 indicates the first time since the year 2004 that the US wind industry will not overcome the last year’s growth level. In spite of first-time federal wind motives, after effects of the financial crisis is persistently creating a hard near-term market landscape, particularly when taking into consideration the continuous energy policy ambiguity. Nonetheless, the U.S. wind market remains poised to come out of this near-term uncertainty with a clearer way toward a future growth that is robust.

Another factor that comes into play regarding the wind decrease at the start of 2010 is the fall in the general electricity use that has been occurring in the U.S. for nearly two years. This has ultimately led utilities to search for less new capacity, including wind.

Kaplan explained that this unprecedented fall in the demand of power and natural gas and electricity has had a deep impact on utility readiness to ink power buying agreements. Regardless of large build years in the year 2009, major autonomous power producers NextEra Energy Resources and EDP Horizon have reduced wind build prospects typifying near-term challenges.

The long-standing growth expectations for the industry nevertheless look promising. The U.S. wind industry will stand for US $ 330 billion in terms of investment between the year 2010 and 2025, with over 90 percent growing from onshore wind, consistent with the study’s predictions.

The Rocky Mountains, Midwest and Great Plains states will prove to be chief wind export hubs to places with hefty consumption for renewables, including the Mid-Atlantic, the South and California.

While the U.S. is nearer than ever to tap into its huge offshore potential with the anticipated finish of the Cape Wind project in the year 2013, offshore is assumed to be accountable for merely 5 percent of the totality of U.S. wind build in the year 2025.

his week, Kaplan talked to Stephen Lacey, of RenewableEnergyWorld.com, at Windpower 2010, Dallas regarding the study and said that despite the fact that the temporary projection looks bleak to some extent, the macro-drivers for wind, taking into consideration national security, job growth, international competition and climate change, are greatly entrenched in the rhetoric surrounding renewable and are generating competition within states in order to become a focus for wind development activity. According to Kaplan, once the economy turns around and there is an increase in the demand of electricity, the demand for wind will automatically increase again.

Source: Renewable energy World