Blog:

According to an article in the most recent issue of The Economist titled A New Twist for Offshore Wind, deep sea turbines, which tend to be significantly more productive than the land-based counterparts due to stronger winds, are suddenly becoming increasingly feasible. Several companies based out of Europe including SWAY (Norway) and Blue H Technologies (the Netherlands) are actively developing the technology necessary to bring these products to life.

After doing a bit of investigation, I discovered that the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) website. They have a Wind Energy Fast Facts (.pdf) document that states:

• U.S. wind energy potential: Estimated at 10,777 billion kWh annually--more than twice the electricity generated in the U.S. today
• Industry growth rate, U.S.: 29% average over last five years (year-end 2002 - 2007).
• Four out of the top five wind farms operating in the United States are located in Texas (Horse Hollow, Sweetwater, Capricorn Ridge and Buffalo Gap
• Operating characteristics of a wind turbine: A wind turbine runs 60% to 80% of the time, and operates at its full rated power output level 10% of the time. On an average day, it generates 30% to 35% of what it would generate if it ran at full power all the time.

According to the Global Wind Energy Council, the countries with the highest total installed capacity are Germany, the United states, Spain, India, China and Denmark. Wikipedia has a list of wind farms operating or under construction. It's amazing to me that we still live in an era where the vast majority of the world's power is produced by fossil fuels. Hopefully the collective brain power of green technology companies can begin to erode that dependency.