page_title: Wind power in the United States
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Wind power in the United States / History
caption_attribution_description: Wind power potential map
context_page_description: Wind power in the United States is a branch of the energy industry that has expanded quickly over the latest several years. From January through December of 2019, 300.1 terawatt-hours were generated by wind power, or 7.29% of all generated electrical energy in the United States. That same year, wind power surpassed hydroelectric power as the largest renewable energy source generated in the U.S.
  As of January 2020, the total installed wind power nameplate generating capacity in the United States was 105,583 megawatts.
  This capacity is exceeded only by China and the European Union. 1,821 MW were further installed by the end of the first quarter of 2020, increasing the total capacity to 107,443 MW.
  Thus far, wind power's largest growth in capacity was in 2012, when 11,895 MW of wind power was installed, representing 26.5% of new power capacity.
  By September of 2019, 19 states had over 1,000 MW of installed capacity with 5 states generating over half of all wind energy in the nation. Texas, with 28,843 MW of capacity, about 16.8% of the state's electricity usage, had the most installed wind power capacity of any U.S. state at the end of 2019.
context_section_description: The first municipal use of multiple wind-electric turbines in the USA may have been a five turbine system in Pettibone, North Dakota in 1940. These were commercial Wincharger units on guyed towers.
  In 1980 the world's first wind farm, consisting of twenty 30 kW wind turbines was installed at Crotched Mountain, in New Hampshire.
  From 1974 through the mid-1980s the United States government worked with industry to advance the technology and enable large commercial wind turbines. A series of NASA wind turbines were developed under a program to create a utility-scale wind turbine industry in the U.S., with funding from the National Science Foundation and later the United States Department of Energy (DOE). A total of 13 experimental wind turbines were put into operation, in four major wind turbine designs. This research and development program pioneered many of the multi-megawatt turbine technologies in use today, including: steel tube towers, variable-speed generators, composite blade materials, partial-span pitch control, as well as aerodynamic, structural, and acoustic engineering design capabilities.
  Later, in the 1980s, California provided tax rebates for wind power. These rebates funded the first major use of wind power for utility electric power. These machines, gathered in large wind parks such as at Altamont Pass would be considered small and un-economic by modern wind power development standards. In 1985 half of the world's wind energy was generated at Altamont Pass. By the end of 1986 about 6,700 wind turbines, mostly less than 100 kW, had been installed at Altamont, at a cost of about $1 billion, and generated about 550 GWh/year (million kWh).
caption: Map showing average wind speed in U.S., including offshore
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