A total of 57,636 wind turbines were released in the U.S. region

Kern County, California, home to the city of Bakersfield, calls itself the "Wind Capital of the West
.
" But a massive new analysis of more than 57,000 commercial wind turbines in the Washington Post's U.
S.
Geological Survey database suggests the county's self-proclaimed overmoderation: It's actually the wind capital
of the entire country.

To create the database, the USGS partnered
with the Department of Energy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the American Wind Energy Association.
These organizations merged their respective datasets to create new databases
that were more accurate and comprehensive than previous work.
Once they compiled the new database, the researchers tried to visually verify the precise location
of each wind turbine with satellite imagery.
As the wind industry grows, they intend to update
it regularly in the coming years.

According to the database, Kern County has about 4,581 wind turbines with a total generating capacity of more than 4,000 megawatts, making Kern County the largest county-level wind power generation concentration in the country
.
In other words, Kern County alone has more
turbines than the entire Northeastern region of the United States.

Most of the county's turbines are concentrated near the Tehachapi Pass, where air currents over the Pacific Ocean pass through the Tehachapi Mountains, giving the area an average annual wind speed of about 20 mph, one of
the highest in the nation.
The natural landscape and high demand for electricity near Los Angeles mean that the area has been at the forefront of the national wind industry since its inception in the 80s
.

This image in the U.
S.
Bureau of Survey's database shows the locations of hundreds of Kern County wind turbines, arranged diagonally
.

California also has the second- and third-highest counties in the nation: Riverside, home to the San Gorgonio Pass wind farm, and Alameda
, home to the Altamont Pass wind farm.
Nolan County in Texas and Gilliam County in Oregon round out the top five
.

On the other hand, there are 2,501 counties with hardly any commercial wind energy to speak of
.
There are many reasons for this, one of which is the single
geographical condition.
The annual average wind speed in the United States varies greatly, as shown in the map below by the U.
S.
Department of Energy, with wind speeds around 80 meters, close to the height of
a typical wind turbine.
The southeast, in particular, is actually a windswept sand
relative to the rest of the country.
As a result, there are few commercial wind power projects
in the region.

In addition to geography, there are political considerations
.
For example, Wyoming highlights a deep purple
color on the map.
According to the Department of Energy, it ranks seventh in the country in terms of wind power potential, but only 17th
in terms of installed capacity.
One factor contributing to this gap: Wyoming is one of two states to tax wind energy (Oklahoma is the other), a system that renewable energy advocates argue has stifled the industry
.

Many U.
S.
states, primarily the South, as well as warmer states like Nebraska and Wyoming, also lack statutory requirements
for electricity that must come from renewable sources such as wind and solar.
It's no coincidence that these states tend to lag behind wind power
.

Still, the cost of wind energy is falling, and the industry's interest is increasingly driven by plain economics rather than political ideology
.
In 2015, the Department of Energy predicted that the installed wind power capacity in the United States would exceed 400 GW by 2050, more than four times more than
the current 89 GW capacity.

A series of huge fresh wind projects that begin in the coming years means that the era of wind dominance in Kern County may soon be over
.