An electric vehicle manufacturer, two schools and two Alaskan villages: these are just some of the organizations using wind turbines to help meet their energy needs.
For the last eight months, researchers from the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have been scouring the nation for information about who installed distributed wind energy projects.
Distributed wind refers to wind turbine installations that power small utilities, individual homes, businesses, farms or facilities. They sit on the "distribution" side of the power grid to serve on-site or local loads, rather than generating energy for transmission across regions.
The findings, issued in the Distributed Wind Market Report 2024 Edition, led by PNNL, show steady growth. More wind turbines were installed in 2023 than each of the previous two years. Distributed wind projects received around $12.4 million in funding from state incentives, federal incentives, tax credits and benefits from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Rural Energy for America Program in 2023, more than double compared to each of the previous two years. Distributed wind is also reaching new, faraway locales, like the northernmost regions of Alaska, and new markets, like electric vehicle manufacturing.
Since 2003, around 92,000 distributed wind turbines which together produce 1,110 megawatts of power have been installed across the United States.
"We're sharing the expanse of applications that distributed wind can support," said Lindsay Sheridan, a wind energy analyst at PNNL and lead author on the report. "Distributed wind can support a farmer, a small business owner, a school, an industrial facility and so much more."
