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25 July 2006 -- As the U.S. wind energy industry stayed on pace for another record year, Texas for the first time supplanted historic leader California as the top state in cumulative wind power capacity, according to the American Wind Energy Association's (AWEA) Second Quarter Market Report.
The report also shows that U.S. developers brought online a capacity total of 822 MW in the first half of the year. With the strong growth, the U.S.'s cumulative wind power capacity surged to 9,971 MW—within close striking distance of the 10-GW milestone.
Texas 's cumulative total now stands at 2,370 MW of capacity followed by California's 2,323 MW. Texas edged ahead of California by adding a total of 375 MW, about half of the total amount installed in the country since the beginning of the year.
California has led the nation in installed wind capacity uninterruptedly for nearly 25 years, ever since the first wind farms were built there in late 1981, and at one time the Golden State was host to more than 80 percent of the wind capacity in the entire world, according to AWEA data. However, energy and electricity prices tanked during the 1980s, putting California's wind power boom on hold.
But Texas by no means has been the lone state busy developing wind power projects. In fact, while Texas took the capacity crown from the perennial state leader, development activity in California has not exactly been dormant, with PPM Energy's 150-MW Shiloh Wind Project in Solano County and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District's 24-MW project near Rio Vista coming online earlier in the year.
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