How Texas wind farms are putting intermittency concerns to rest
It is August and that means the latest version of The Wind Technologies Market Report (WTMR) has been released by the US DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) office.
The WTMR is a chronicle of growth and economic and technology trends in the wind industry. Wind power has begun taking its place as a substantial contributor to electricity generation in the US. Due to its intermittent nature there is an increasing, and some suggest, premature, concern over limits on penetration.
This is probably driven in large part by the large amounts of curtailment in Texas in 2009. The 2014 WTMR may put some of those concerns to rest. Data in the report show that in Texas, curtailment has been slashed from 17% in 2009 to 0.5% in 2014 (figure 1). This occurred despite the backdrop of increased wind generation in Texas. It was due in large part to bringing added transmission online.
