Total installed wind capacity in the United States was lower last year than in 2016, according to the new 2017 Wind Technologies Market Report from DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The report found that the US wind industry installed 7,017 megawatts of capacity last year, bringing total utility-scale wind capacity to nearly 89 GW. In 2016, the industry added 8,203 megawatts, last year’s Wind Technologies Market Report showed.

Investment was also lower. In 2016, $13 billion was invested in new plants while last year the total was $11 billion. However, the latest report noted that lower turbine prices have driven reductions in installed project costs.

The capacity-weighted average installed project cost within the DOE’s 2017 sample was $1,610/kW — a decrease of $795/kW from the peak in average reported costs in 2009 and 2010. “Early indications from a sample of projects currently under construction suggest that somewhat lower costs are on the horizon,” the report added.

Utility-scale wind projects were operational in 41 states last year, the DOE reported. Texas continues to lead with more than 22 GW of wind capacity. The report also showed that Oklahoma, Iowa, California, and Kansas each have more than 5,000 MW.

Wind Turbine Trends

The average turbine capacity, rotor diameter, and hub height increased last year, continuing a long-term trend, the DOE found.

“To optimize wind power project cost and performance, turbines continue to grow in size,” the report said. “The average rated capacity of newly installed wind turbines in the United States in 2017 was 2.32 MW, up 8% from the previous year and 224% since 1998?1999.” Rotor diameter in 2017 was 113 meters on average.

Other trends highlighted:

• Turbines originally designed for lower wind speed sites have rapidly gained market share, and are being deployed in a range of wind resource conditions.
• Wind turbines were deployed in somewhat lower wind-speed sites in 2017 in comparison to the previous three years.
• A large number of wind power projects continued to employ multiple turbine configurations from a single turbine supplier.

Offshore and Distributed Wind Markets Add Capacity

In two other 2017 reports released this week, the DOE looked closely at the national distributed wind market and the offshore wind technologies market.

DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that US wind turbines in distributed applications reached a cumulative installed capacity of 1,076 MW from approximately 81,000 turbines installed across all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Guam.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory reported that the US offshore wind industry recently took a leap forward as commercial-scale projects were competitively selected in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

“The US offshore wind project pipeline has reached a total of 25,464 MW of capacity across 13 states, including the 30 MW Block Island Wind Farm commissioned in 2016,” NREL concluded.