US wind gets found in transmission

American Wind Power Association

Wind energy is breaking records across the US, thanks to long-needed transmission upgrades that are relieving congestion on the power grid and allowing more clean energy to reach consumers.

Last week, a new record was set on the main Texas grid, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, reaching over 10,000 MW of wind.

This was the most ever for a US power system, the equivalent of powering more than five million average Texas homes.

In two previously unreported records, wind energy supplied a record 39.7 per cent of total ERCOT electricity demand on March 31, and two weeks ago the Southwest Power Pool region just to the north of Texas set a new wind record with 7202 MW of wind production.

Nationwide, AWEA’s forthcoming US Wind Industry Annual Market Report Year Ending 2013 finds up to 60,000 MW of new wind energy development would be enabled by major transmission projects that are in advanced stages of development.

Texas is the national leader in wind energy in part because it has been a leader in creating policies that enable private sector investment in and open access to an expanded transmission grid.

Michael Goggin, senior electric industry analyst for AWEA, explained “broadly allocating the cost of transmission is key, as the large reliability and economic benefits of a strong transmission grid are broadly spread and a strong grid is essential for maintaining a competitive electricity market.”

Texas’s recent wind records were made possible by the completion of the Competitive Renewable Energy Zone  transmission lines earlier this year, which connect world-class wind energy resource areas in West Texas and the Texas Panhandle to electricity demand centres.

The lines are allowing ERCOT to nearly double its use of wind energy. The latest ERCOT planning report indicates that 8413 MW of new wind projects have signed agreements to connect to the grid, which if all built as expected would bring around $US15 billion in additional investment to the state and take ERCOT’s total wind capacity to 19,478 MW. More than 7000 MW of wind capacity are currently under construction in Texas alone.

Other regions are following Texas’s lead in adopting policies that will enable long-needed grid upgrades. The Midwest grid operator, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, has adopted similar cost allocation policies for a set of transmission lines called the Multi-Value Projects. These projects will potentially integrate nearly 14,000 MW of new wind capacity. Similarly, the Southwest Power Pool has adopted a Highway/Byway transmission cost allocation policy and is making progress towards building a set of lines called the Priority Projects, which are expected to serve more than 3000 MW of new wind capacity.

“It may have taken a few years, but in many parts of the country the grid is finally catching up with wind energy’s rapid growth. These recent wind energy records, and the tens of billions of dollars of new wind energy investment in the pipeline, are a product of those transmission success stories,” continued AWEA’s Goggin.   

To summarise the recent wind energy generation records:

This article was originally published by the American Wind Power Association.