Wind Farm Potential in America

Here’s a guy who believes wind can reduce our dependency on gasoline by 38% in the next ten years. The video on the front page of his web site outlines his plan. Basically, he’s pushing wind power to relieve the electric grid from using all our natural gas, and then using the (domestic) natural gas to power vehicles like cars, trucks and buses.

The Department of Energy reports that 20% of America’s electricity can come from wind. Look at how big that wind turbine is. They are 410 feet tall and the blades span 148 feet in length. In one year, a 3-megawatt wind turbine like this produces as much energy as 12,000 barrels of imported oil.

Wind power already accounts for 48 billion kWh of electricity a year in the United States — enough to serve more than 4.5 million households. That is still only about 1% of current demand, but the potential of wind is much greater.

A 2005 Stanford University study found that there is enough wind power worldwide to satisfy global demand 7 times over — even if only 20% of wind power could be captured.

His map shows that the wind is blowing hard right in the middle of the country, where the red is. These are the prime areas for capturing the electricity.

I’m not sure how realistic this plan is. Some people say that we’ll have to switch over to a DC grid to transmit wind power over long distances. I’m not sure this can be accomplished in the 10 years he’s outlining. Still, it does have some interesting statistics on that site.