Named Rolling Thunder, this project, initiated by Dehlsen Associates and drawing on the leadership of Jim Dehlsen, a wind energy pioneer in California, is designed to feed power to the midwestern region around Chicago. This proposed project is not only large by wind power standards, it is one of the largest energy projects of any kind in the world today. Advances in wind turbine technology, drawing heavily from the aerospace industry, have lowered the cost of wind power from 38 cents per kilowatt hour in the early 1980s to 3 to 6 cents today depending on the wind site. Wind, now competitive with fossil fuels, is already cheaper in some locations than oil or gas-fired power. With major corporations, such as ABB, Shell International, and Enron plowing resources into this field, further cost cuts are in prospect.
Wind is a vast, worldwide source of energy.
The U.S. Great Plains are the Saudi Arabia of wind power. China can double its existing generating capacity from wind alone. Densely populated Western Europe can supply all of its electricity needs from offshore wind power. Today Denmark, the world leader in wind turbine technology and manufacture, is getting 15 percent of its electricity from wind power. Spain's industrial state of Navarra, starting from scratch six years ago, now gets 24 percent of its electricity from wind.