"Unlike large central-station generation, which is connected to the utility transmission system, distributed generation is typically smaller and connects to the grid at distribution-voltage levels. There is debate about the role wind power generation could play in the nation´s expanding market for distributed generation because most wind power development in the United States has come from large-scale wind power plants, sometimes referred to as wind farms, and because wind-generated electricity is intermittent. Some wind power advocates postulate that distributed wind generation offers significant advantages over wind farms to utilities interested in adding wind generation.
The United States does have some limited experience with distributed wind applications. From the late 1920s through the early 1950s, thousands of small windmills and turbines were installed on farms all across the country to pump water and generate electricity. However, the Rural Electrification
Administration (formed in 1936) helped create a centralized electricity grid, encouraging farmers to disconnect their turbines and join the system.
This ultimately led to the demise of the U.S. wind turbine industry, as the main manufacturers went out of business in 1956.

Utilities in the United States have had little experience with adding a single wind turbine or small cluster of turbines to distribution lines at multiple locations. Such distributed installations typically have been less than 5 megawatts (MW) in the United States and Europe, and connect to power lines that directly serve residential, commercial, and small industrial customers. This power size limit is somewhat arbitrary, but is generally consistent with the technical constraints associated with integrating wind power for a large portion of the U.S. distribution system. The extent to which a wind project is integrated into the local economy is also a characteristic of distributed generation. A distributed wind installation may or may not be used to offset customer electricity consumption, depending on turbine ownership and the point of connection relative to the customer´s meter.
Excerpt from The National Wind Coordinating Committee report "Distributed Wind Power Assessment" (February 2001).

  "A comparative Analysis of Community Wind Power Development Options in Oregon", July 2004, prepared by Mark Bolinger, Ryan Wiser, Tom Wind, Dan Juhl and Robert Grace for the Energy Trust of Oregon.
 
A Survey of State Support for Community Wind Power Development by Mark Bollinger of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory