Americans Increasing Use of Wind Power Through Small-scale Operations [VIDEO]

More Americans are installing wind turbines near their homes, farms or businesses to generate sustainable energy, according to two reports released Tuesday by the US Department of Energy and its affiliates.

The reports detail the growth in the wind industry sector of the economy and the overall distribution of wind power operations in the United States. In the 2012 Wind Technologies Market Report,  the latest trends in the US wind power market are detailed, including that last year more than 13 gigawatts of new wind power capacity was added to the US grid (nearly double the capacity deployed in 2011) and that that nearly 75 percent of the wind turbine equipment installed on US soil last year was also made in America.

And in a new and first-of-its-kind report by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a detailed picture of the use of distributed wind power across the United States provides more evidence that the practice is gaining momentum. Over the past 10 years, the US distributed wind market has grown more than five-fold, the Department of Energy reports.

Gathering wind energy and using it at or near the point of origin instead of buying wind energy from a large, centralized windfarm is an energy trend otherwise referred to as "distributed wind." Distributed wind operations can be just a single turbine in someone's backyard to several large turbines that power a facility or a neighborhood.

"The public often pictures large wind projects with long rows of turbines when they think of wind power," said the report's lead author Alice Orrell, an energy analyst at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. "But this report provides detailed data that shows this image is incomplete. Many of the nation's turbines are for distributed, not centralized, wind projects."

Turbines used in distributed wind applications come in a range of sizes and frequently help power remote or off-the-grid homes and farms, as well as local schools and manufacturing facilities.

Some highlights of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's findings include:

• 68 percent of all wind turbines installed in United States between 2003-2012 were distributed wind turbines, representing about 69,000 turbines that can generate 812 megawatts combined.
• About a third of all wind turbines installed in the United States in 2012 were distributed wind turbines, representing about 3,800 turbines that can generate 175 megawatts combined.
• While the total number of distributed wind turbines installed in 2012 declined by nearly 50 percent, the amount of power those new turbines could potentially produce increased by 62 percent.
• This shift is mainly because more large turbines are being used in distributed wind projects.