Billionaire Warren Buffett is throwing his substantial investing power behind alternative forms of energy. MidAmerican utility company, owned by Buffett may soon be the nation's top wind-based utility company. The utility suppliers projects to have 2,909 megawatts of wind generated power fields operating by the end of 2011. Buffett's company has invested $5.4 billion to the alternative source of power.
According to the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, in 2010 MidAmerican installed 40,000 megawatts of wind power in Iowa, where the corporate headquarters are based. The increase in wind powered energy resources makes the nation's second largest supplier of wind powered energy. Texas is currently the largest such supplier.
Buffett's investment of 258 new wind turbines on the company's farm in Iowa may be just the first of many steps for MidAmerican's advancement of alternative power in the United States. The wind turbines are spread across five counties in Iowa and can power more than 200,000 homes. The project is expected to bolster "green" jobs at Siemens plants in both Iowa and Kansas.
The Enercon E-126 wind turbine is currently the strongest such alternative energy generator, able to generate 7 megawatts of power. While the turbine showcases the improvements in wind turbine power in the United States, Norwegian ad Spanish companies are already planning to release even stronger wind machines. A 10 megawatt wind turbine at the Norwegian based Sway company completed two years of testing at the end of 2010 and will begin mass production in 2011. A consortium of companies based in Spain are currently creating a 15 megawatt massive wind turbine which is planned to begin production by 2020. The Spanish off-shore wind turbine is is expected to be able to overcome the financial and technical obstacles which currently impeded harnessing off-shore wind for energy.
"Cost parity is the holy grail of renewable energy," New York University for Policy Integrity Director Michael Livermore stated. "But there is cost parity with subsidies and there is cost parity without subsidies. If this is happening without subsidies then that means that wind power is going to explode, regardless of what the government does. I doubt that's what really is going on."
Analysis compiled by the American Wind Energy Association claims that wind power in the United States is now cost competitive with natural gas. A report from the agency states that renewable forms of energy generation are closing the fiscal gap which stood in the way of replacing fossil fuel consumption. Power generated from wind turbines has recently been sold as cheaply as six center per kilowatt hour. A conflicting report from the government Energy Information Administration states that wind power still commonly costs nearly 10 cents per kilowatt hour, as opposed to the typical 6.3 cent fee per kilowatt hour of natural gas.
