KEARNEY — Paula Peterson and her husband don’t expect to start selling power to their neighbors, but the O’Neill couple would like to install a wind turbine to help power their ranch.

They weren’t sure whether their wind power idea was feasible, so they attended one of the renewable-energy workshops at Wednesday’s MarketPlace conference for entrepreneurs in Kearney.

“We’ve always been interested in it because Nebraska is such a windy place,” Peterson said.

That’s why Peterson was encouraged hear Robert Byrnes, president of the Nebraska Renewable Energy Association, talk about how he disconnected his farm from the electric grid about three years ago and now uses wind turbines for his power.

“Nebraska is blessed with a lot of opportunities for renewable energy,” Byrnes said.

Martin Kleinschmit, who has researched renewable-energy options for the Center for Rural Affairs, said much of the growth in the U.S. wind power industry has been driven by tax incentives. The center sponsored Wednesday’s workshop.

Nationwide, the industry added 2,454 megawatts of new wind power generating capacity last year, according to the American Wind Energy Association. That represents a 27 percent increase in the country’s wind power capacity, which stood at 11,603 megawatts at the end of 2006.

One megawatt of electricity is roughly enough to power 250 to 300 American homes for a day.

The trade group also predicts that wind power generating capacity will increase 26 percent more this year.

Kleinschmit said he’d like to see wind power projects in Nebraska owned by local investors because the profits would help boost the local economy. But some state laws may need to be changed first.

It would help if Nebraska had a law allowing consumers to sell excess power back to power companies if they set up their own wind turbines or other power supply, he said. A bill (LB 581) to allow that has been proposed in the Legislature.

“We look at it as a huge opportunity that’s not being capitalized on,” Kleinschmit said.

Nebraska ranks sixth in the nation in terms of the potential for wind energy, according to the wind energy trade group.

But there aren’t nearly as many wind turbines in Nebraska, which is the nation’s only all public-power state, as in neighboring states. Nearby states, including Iowa and Minnesota, are both among the top five wind energy-producing states, with California producing the most.

Part of the reason why wind power development has been slow in Nebraska is that there aren’t as many federal tax credits available to the state’s public power districts as there are to private investors and power companies in other states.

Nebraska Public Power District’s renewable-energy manager David Rich said there is a huge incentive for private investment, but not much incentive for public investment right now.

Rich said the relative cost of wind power is another factor in its slow development in Nebraska. He said the state’s public power districts have been slow to invest in wind power because wind power is still more expensive than generating electricity with coal, which accounts for about 59 percent of NPPD’s power. Either through wholesale or retail customers, NPPD supplies power to about a million Nebraskans.

In other states where natural gas is used more widely to generate electricity, such as Colorado, Rich said, there is an economic incentive to use wind power is cheaper than natural gas-supplied power.

But the biggest unknown is whether the cost of generating electricity with coal and other fossil fuels will increase if new restrictions on carbon dioxide output are imposed.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty,” Rich said.

NPPD already owns and operates a 60-megawatt wind farm south of Ainsworth and two turbines near Springview.

The 36-turbine Ainsworth complex, which opened in 2005, is the state’s largest wind farm. It produces enough electricity annually to provide power to 19,000 homes.

NPPD gets about 1 percent of its power from renewable energy. Rich said NPPD’s goal is to generate about 5 percent of its power from renewable energy.

Doug Babbitt said he would love to install wind turbines at his nursery near Paxton to power his operation and then sell any excess.

Babbitt said he’s already planning to install new windmills to power irrigation wells, and wind turbines would also make sense.

“I don’t see it as a dream,” Babbitt said about wind power. “It’s something we’re going to have to do.”