NREL.gov
Wind power is ranked on a scale from 1 to 7; the greater the rank, the more powerful the wind. The greater the wind's force, the more electricity which can be generated from the wind. This is a wind resource map of the United States, which displays the location of ranked wind strength. State and international resource maps are also avaliable. Incorrect estimation of wind resources can be economically detrimental to the establisher of a wind farm (Anonymous, 2006).
Not only is wind a renewable resource, but it is also very cheap. The U.S. Department of Energy founded the Wind Energy Program, which developed "cost-efficient technologies" (Anonymous, 2006). The program aided in the reduction of wind energy costs per kilowatt hour from eighty cents to between 4 to 6 cents (Anonymous, 2006). Also, the more wind farms that develop, the cheaper the cost of wind-produced electricity will be.
Wind speed is not a constant; therefore, it is common for wind plants to have low average capacity factors. Conventional fuel plants have capacity factors ranging from forty to eighty percent, versus only twenty-five to forty percent for the average wind farm (Anonymous, 2006). A plant's capacity factor can be found by:
(Power that would have been produced if turbine
operated at maximum output 100% of the time)