US Wind Industry to Add 2,500MW in 2005

Is wind energy at the inflection point?

According to the American Wind Energy Association, the industry is expected to add about 2,500MW in installed capacity in 2005, which would represent a 37% growth over 2004 according to this DOE site.

For venture investors, finding direct dealflow in wind energy now requires some work -- most of the turbines are now produced by large, integrated, publicly-traded players, and (as discussed before) a lot of the remaining investment opportunities are project finance-oriented.

However, the growth of wind capacity heightens the importance of electricity transmission technologies, and there remain some very interesting investment opportunities in wind power generation or facilitation.