Texas Grid Finally Catches Up With Wind Power Output
For years Texas was producing more wind power
than it could effectively put to use.
Between 2006 and 2009 over 7,000 megawatts of wind
capacity was built in the state. These
turbines were almost entirely located in the windy
plains of West Texas. But most of the state's
population is located further east in the Dallas,
Austin and Houston metro areas. This proved to
be a problem. Wind capacity in the west was
being built out faster than the grid capacity to
transmit the power to where it was needed.
The result was a substantial amount of curtailments
and even negative pricing for wind electricity in
Texas' real-time wholesale electricity spot market.
Negative pricing for wind electricity is made
possible by federal wind credits that pay wind
energy producers to generate power even if they are
getting a negative price for their electricity.
A new report by the EIA, however, shows that the
number of
curtailments and negative pricing events have
fallen dramatically since the state has completed a
massive, multi-year, multi-billion dollar project to
upgrade its infrastructure and build new high
capacity transmission lines to move all of this wind
power across the state.
Dubbed the
Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ)
Project, the plan to ease the state's transmission
congestion problem took several years to complete
and required an investment of over $7 billion by the
state's rate payers. Ultimately, the project
consisted of around 180 transmission projects which
enable the state to move power from the 5 CREZ zones
designated by the Texas PUC to the state's
population centers.
Today more than 12,000MW of electricity in Texas
comes from wind power. The state known for being a
fossil fuel juggernaut has quietly become a leader
in the U.S. in the area of renewable energy.
The Texas wind energy portfolio is the largest of
any state and would even be near the top if listed
among the countries of the world. It is
also home to the
largest federal wind farm in the country.
As impressive as the state's current wind capacity
seems, proponents envision and even larger role for
wind in the Texas electricity market. The Wind
Coalition
points out that:
"According to data from the National Renewable
Energy Laboratory, Texas' land-based wind potential
at an 80-meter hub height is 1,901,530 MW, the best
resource in the United States and the equivalent of
18 times the state's current electricity needs,"
This statement was made as part of written comments
submitted to The Texas Public utility Commission in
which the Wind Coalition urged an even bigger role
for wind energy as planners look at how the state
could meet the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency's (EPA) proposed Clean Power Plan.
Indeed, Texas seems to be well positioned to deal
with increasingly tough emission regulations.
With the completion of the CREZ project they have
managed to better integrate the state's wind
production assets with the state's electricity grid
and could be seen as a model for other jurisdictions
that struggle to integrate renewable power with
existing infrastructures.
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