The Struggle Continues
It seems like the conversation of wind generation never really ends. It was only a few years ago that wind penetration in the U.S. generation mix was irrelevant in the whole scheme of providing electrons to the power grid. Well, my, how that has changed. In the last few months SPP has reported records for both Wind Penetration in the SPP generation mix of 60.56% on March 16, 2018 and a Wind Generation Peak of 19,690MW on December 15, 2017.
Many people have called the electric power grid of North America the greatest engineering marvel ever by man. Currently the grid is being tested to its max by the overwhelming amount of megawatts of renewable energy being generated. One big problem is that wind generation is typically installed where the load is low and the power grid lacks the robust buildout to support the additional generation.
Ok, now that I have told you what you probably already now, let’s compound the problem with renewable energy subsidies. Take a look at the following article that illustrates how all of this creates issues beyond the power grid. The struggles for Oklahoma are just one example of how renewable energy has become much larger than any of us ever realized.
