A recent study from the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) suggests that the continental U.S. has the potential to produce 37 million gigawatt-hours of electricity from wind power each year. That’s a huge leap from the 52,026 gigawatt-hours we used in 2008.

This study was just looking at potential for wind energy, but it’s exciting news for the wind industry regardless. It certainly makes bills requiring a high percentage of renewable energy from utilities like this one in Colorado seem much more doable! NREL also released these handy wind resource maps to help folks find areas of interest for harnessing wind power, whether they’re thinking about a home turbine or a larger-scale wind farm.

Of course, the problem with wind is the same problem you run into with any renewable: storage. Wind is intermittent, and in order for us to effectively incorporate renewables into our power supply on any sort of large scale, we need a way to store excess power for the times when the wind’s not blowing. Battery technology has come a long way, and it’s looking like there are some really promising solutions in development on that front.

Between the potential energy payoff, advances in battery technology, and improvements in the turbines themselves, maybe we ought to be throwing more research dollars at wind power?

Source: GO Media - Written by Becky Striepe - Image Credit: Wind Turbines. Creative Commons photo by vax-o-matic