Wind Power Briefly Supplied More Than Half Of Great Plains' Energy

Wind turbines briefly powered more than 50 percent of electricity demand on the Southwest Power Pool grid on Sunday, the first for a grid in North America.

The grid set a wind-penetration record of 52.1 percent early Sunday morning, becoming the first grid to serve more than 50 percent of its load at a given time with wind energy, SPP said in a statement. Wind penetration is a measure of how much of the total load is served by wind energy.

“Ten years ago, we thought hitting even a 25 percent wind-penetration level would be extremely challenging, and any more than that would pose serious threats to reliability,” SPP Vice President of Operations Bruce Rew said in the statement.

SPP's footprint covers 14 states, spanning almost 550,000 square miles from the Canadian border in Montana and North Dakota in the north to parts of New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana in the south.

“We’re able to manage wind generation more effectively than other, smaller systems can because we’ve got a huge pool of resources to draw from,” Rew said. “With a footprint as broad as ours, even if the wind stops blowing in the upper Great Plains, we can deploy resources waiting in the Midwest and Southwest to make up any sudden deficits.”

According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2015 11 states generated at least 10% of their total electricity from wind. As recently as 2010, only three states had at least a 10% wind share. Iowa had the largest wind generation share followed by South Dakota and Kansas.

Image Credit: richardghawley via Flickr Creative Commons