Today's Number - 60 GWs

Sixty gigawatts (GW) is the total amount of installed wind power capacity in America as of the end of 2012.  It is also the amount of coal-fired generating capacity that will be retired over the next five years in the eastern US.  The Department of Energy reports that 

Last year, over 13 gigawatts (GW) of new wind power capacity were added to the U.S. grid – nearly double the wind capacity deployed in 2011. This tremendous growth helped America’s total wind power capacity surpass 60 GW at the end of 2012 – representing enough capacity to power more than 15 million homes each year, or as many homes as in California and Washington state combined. The country’s cumulative installed wind energy capacity has increased more than 22-fold since 2000.

E & E Publishing, in an article  passed along by  Midwest Energy News,  reports that 60 GW of coal-powered electricity generating capacity will be retired over the next 5 years.  This will present issues for the regional power transmission organizations to deal with.

The reliability of the U.S. electric grid has been a key concern among regulators and utilities in response to impending emissions control regulations by U.S. EPA, including greenhouse gas regulations and tighter control on so-called conventional pollutants such as nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxides. 

Nearly 85 percent of the nation’s coal-fired power plants are in the Eastern Interconnection, a part of the grid comprising 39 states along the East Coast and across to the Midwest. By 2015, about half of those coal plants will be 50 years old or older, but they represent about 25 percent of the region’s total capacity, the report says. 

The report says that the region contains 269 gigawatts of coal capacity, with one-third of that in five states: Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

The news about increased power generation from wind is a good thing - it's helpful to have a mix of power generation sources, and the technology behind wind turbines will likely continue to improve.  But one can't compare 60 GW of  base load, reliable generation from coal plants with 60 GW of intermittent generation from wind turbines.  And the unsubsidized cost of wind generation will have to come down significantly to be comparable to fossil fuel or nuclear.   In some ways, wind may be a victim of its own success - having spent the last few years proclaiming that its costs are on a par with fossil fuels, there may be less support among politicians for continuing subsidies.