The State of U.S. Renewable Power

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BITS & PIECES

WIND

The U.S. currently has more than 1,600 megawatts of installed windpower generation capacity. This generation capacity produces about three billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year. That's enough electricity to meet the annual residential electricity needs of more than one million people.

More than 90% of the total wind power produced in the U.S. is generated by three West Coast wind farms (located in Altamont Pass in northern California and Tehachapi and Palm Springs in southern California).

The U.S. possesses enough useable wind resource to produce more electricity than the nation currently uses. The majority of this usable resource blows across the Great Plains region. North Dakota alone has enough suitable wind resource to supply 36% of the electricity consumed in the U.S.

SOLAR

The U.S. annually uses more than 71 trillion British Thermal Units (BTUs) of solar energy (1 million BTUs equals 90 pounds of coal or eight gallons of gasoline). The residential and commercial sectors use 60 trillion BTUs, the industrial - sector 11 trillion BTUs, and utilities 500 billion BTUs. In the last seven years, photovoltaic sales have nearly tripled. More than 84 megawatts of modules were manufactured worldwide in 1995.

GEOTHERMAL

U.S. geothermal power plants currently have a total electricity generation capacity of 2,700 megawatts. This is enough electricity to meet the residential electricity needs of more than 3.5 million people. Most of the country's geothermal resources are located in the western U.S. In fact, the world's largest geothermal power plant--the Geysers Power Plant in northern California--generates more than 1,700 megawatts of power. Known geothermal reserves could supply the entire country with electricity for 30 years.