A few days ago, the American Wind Energy Association released its annual rankings - download pdf here. Many of the subsequent headlines were geared to how impressively Texas has ramped up wind capacity, nearly 2 GW in 20007 or what it took the whole of the UK to do in 20 years. 

Yet for me, the real story is how pervasive and dominant non-US companies are in the United States Wind Sector at the manufacturing and windfarm ownership level.

Take the Top 5 "Managing Owners" of wind power projects in the USA - 3 of them, Iberdrola, Horizon (owned by Energias de Portugal) and Babcock & Brown are originally from outside of the States.

Of the Top 5 wind turbines manufacturers, GE Energy is out on top, but followed by Vestas, Siemens, Gamesa and Mitsubishi. It's also curious how the best-selling turbine in the USA last year was the GE 1.5 MW model. I don't know if that can last. The European manufacturers have more expertise in making wind turbines bigger and in the long run, as far as windpower is concerned, size does matter.