A two-year study conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory shows that wind energy could generate 20% of the electricity needed by households and businesses in the eastern half of the United States by 2024. But, the report cautions, while wind energy is technically feasible, it will require significant expansion of the transmission infrastructure and system operational changes in order for it to be realized.
Still, the study says the relative cost of aggressively expanding the existing transmission grid represents only a small portion of the total annualized costs. The study also shows that drawing wind energy from a larger geographic area makes it both less expensive and a more reliable energy source. It says increasing the geographic diversity of wind power projects in a given operating pool makes the aggregated wind power output more predictable and less variable.
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