Nine gigawatts of wind turbines were added last year in the US

Wind accounts for about one-third of all new generation added in 2019, and it ticked up to seven percent of all electricity generated in the US.But as for the grid carrying that electricity, a little under 1,000 miles of transmission lines were built last year—the second lowest amount in the last 10 years.The trend towards bigger wind turbines continued, with the average capacity of a turbine built last year reaching 2.55 megawatts. These changes have boosted “capacity factors”—the average fraction of a turbine’s maximum capacity that it is generating as the winds vary over the days and seasons. Wind has maintained its cost lead over natural gas electricity, although solar electricity has caught up in the last few years.While the report projects wind to gradually get cheaper in the future, it also notes that wind is losing a little bit of its edge as its slice of the generation pie increases.