By better understanding how the turbine works, engineers can design closer to the limits, he said. They can, for example, get more power with smaller blades.
"The idea is to continue to drive down the cost of wind energy to make these units operate more reliably, more efficiently, and to be competitive with other forms of energy," said David Rosenberg, Gamesa's vice president of communications.
"We're getting there," he added. "We're getting there much more quickly than we thought."
Wind still produces just a fraction of the nation's electricity - 2.3 percent for 2010. That year, with the recession and other factors, installations slowed. Even so, wind power represented 25 percent of all new generation capacity in 2010 in the United States.
Last year, the industry rebounded, installing 30 percent more wind capacity than in 2010.
Aside from conventional hydroelectric dams, wind remains the dominant form of renewable energy, ahead of solar and geothermal.
Pennsylvania ranks 16th in the nation in the wind capacity installed, according to the American Wind Energy Association, an industry group.
The state's wind farms produce enough electricity to power 180,000 homes. Projects that would add more than four times that amount of power have been proposed, according to the association's data.
New Jersey, which has few wind farms, is nevertheless on course to have the nation's first offshore wind project.
Fishermen's Energy of New Jersey L.L.C. is developing a demonstration project in state waters 2.8 miles off the coast of Atlantic City - a less-complicated process than installing turbines farther offshore in federal waters, which it also plans to do.
