I’ve been following renewable energy for decades, so since I was born in Kansas, I thought I would take at look at wind power there. If you have been there, you know how strong and consistent the wind is.
But then I started looking: first at NREL, then at Wikipedia which has a very good write-up. The results astounded me.
Here is the first paragraph:
The U.S. State of Kansas has high potential capacity for wind power, second behind Texas. The most recent estimates (2012) are that Kansas has a potential for 952 GW of wind power capacity yet has only about 1.2 GW installed. Kansas could generate 3,102 TW·h of electricity each year,[1] which represents over 75% of all the electricity generated in the United States in 2011.[2] This electricity could be worth $290 billion per year (at 9.35 cents per kW·h[3]). Kansas generated 24% of its electricity with wind in 2015.[4]
After reading the whole article, I made a graph of the trend:
According to the Wiki article:
Kansas has led the nation over the past decade in all measured categories of scaling up renewable electricity generation with an overall growth in generation of 1,678.5% from 2001-2007.[7] This rapid overall growth in renewable energy generation represents an equally large increase of 1,487.9%, as a percent of total state electricity generation. Massive increases in generation are largely the product of wind energy development across the state. In 2001, Kansas had 114 Megawatts (MW) of wind energy generation. By the end of 2011, Kansas had installed 1,224 MW of generation.[8] Wind energy generation in Kansas grew 2,793.5% from 2001-2007. This amounts to an average growth of slightly over 75% per year.[9]
Please read the whole article; it’s worth it.
en.wikipedia.org/…
So, my question is, with such great potential, why do we rarely hear of it?
NOTE: hat tip to Tom Waits for the title inspiration.