The wind power industry has exploded over the past decade. In the U.S. alone, almost 40,000 MW of wind power have come online since 2000. As more wind generation has been added, grid operators have been challenged to integrate a large amount of intermittent generation. As the state with by far the most installed wind power capacity, Texas has had to face this problem head on.
Critical advances in technology have led to new ways of balancing wind power. For example, new advances in turbine technology have allowed wind developers to build projects in more diverse areas, which in turn has diversified generation patterns. In addition, the rapid advancement of storage technologies has led to pilot projects being installed in conjunction with wind farms to demonstrate the benefits storage can bring to the electrical grid.
Diverse Resources
In Texas, most of the installed wind power is in West Texas and the Panhandle. Wind speeds in those areas are consistently higher at night, which is when demand for electricity is lowest. In the past few years, several new onshore wind farms have been built along the Texas Gulf Coast. The wind resource in this area is quite different: The wind blows the most in the afternoon, resulting in the highest amounts of generation when peak load occurs.
We have seen a significant increase in coastal wind projects for several reasons. First, transmission congestion issues in West Texas led developers to look for areas with more transmission capacity. More importantly, turbine manufacturers began building turbines suitable for areas with lower wind resources, such as the Texas coast. These new turbines provide higher capacity factors than were originally available, and they have made coastal projects more economic.
The wind industry has long argued that geographic diversity of wind energy helps to even out variability. This is true within one wind project, where the turbines are spread out over many miles, but even more so when projects are spread over several counties. Spreading out turbines also helps in another way. As a weather event rolls in, it may affect some turbines long before it moves across all of the turbines; this arrangement allows grid operators time to ramp up or ramp down other generation, as necessary. The best case scenario, now being seen in Texas, occurs when projects are spread out into areas where the wind tends to blow at different times of the day.
Utilities can also help balance their portfolios by mixing renewable technologies. Like coastal wind, solar projects generate during the day. Thus, combining solar and wind resources can help balance generation.
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