March winds brought a new wind power record to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) region Wednesday evening, March 26, when instantaneous output reached a record 10,296 MW at 8:48 p.m.
ERCOT says that at the time the new record was set, wind generation was providing nearly 29% of the 35,768 MW of electricity being used on the its grid. The new record beats the previous record set earlier this month by more than 600 MW.
Of the total generation at the time, 1,433 MW came from wind generators on the Gulf Coast, while 8,863 MW came from other regions. Most came from West Texas, where transmission projects in the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones were recently completed to transport more power from that region to more populated areas of the state.
‘With the continuing growth in wind generation capacity and the completion of new transmission projects to get it to the grid, ERCOT is making greater use of this resource," says Ken McIntyre, ERCOT's vice president of grid planning and operations.
According to ERCOT, Texas continues to have more wind power capacity than any other state. The ERCOT region has more than 11,000 MW of commercial wind power capacity, with nearly 8,000 MW of new projects in development and more than 26,700 MW under study. Wind power constituted 9.9% of the total energy used in the ERCOT region in 2013, compared to 9.2% in 2012.
EROCT notes wind generation had already broken previous records twice this month. Additionally, 9,868 MW of wind generation was serving a record 38.43% of the 25,677 MW system-wide demand at 3:19 a.m. on Thursday, March 27.
