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By Scott DiSavino
Feb 14 (Reuters) - Wind briefly powered more than 50 percentof electric demand on Sunday, the 14-state Southwest Power Pool(SPP) said, for the first time on any North American power grid.
SPP coordinates the flow of electricity on the high voltagepower lines from Montana and North Dakota to New Mexico, Texasand Louisiana.
Wind power in the SPP region has grown significantly to over16,000 MW currently from less than 400 megawatts in the early2000s and is expected to continue growing. One megawatt canpower about 1,000 homes.
"Ten years ago, we thought hitting even a 25 percentwind-penetration level would be extremely challenging, and anymore than that would pose serious threats to reliability," SPPVice President of Operations Bruce Rew said in a statement.
"Now we have the ability to reliably manage greater than 50percent wind penetration. It's not even our ceiling," Rew said.
Wind power briefly reached 52.1 percent at 4:30 a.m. localtime on Sunday, SPP said on Monday, beating the previouspenetration milestone of 49.2 percent. Wind penetration is ameasure of the amount of total load served by wind at a giventime.
Currently, wind is the third biggest source of generation inthe SPP region, making up about 15 percent of capacity in 2016behind natural gas and coal. This is the first time that windwas even briefly more than 50 percent of the source of electricpower at any U.S. grid, according to SPP.
"With a (generation) footprint as broad as ours, even if thewind stops blowing in the upper Great Plains, we can deployresources waiting in the Midwest and Southwest to make up anysudden deficits," Rew said.
Of the 11 states that received more than 10 percent of theirpower from wind in 2015, the top five are Iowa at 31 percent,South Dakota at 25 percent, Kansas at 24 percent, Oklahoma at 18percent and North Dakota at 18 percent, all at least partiallylocated in the SPP grid, according to the U.S. EnergyInformation Administration.
Some of the biggest wind farms in the grid are operated byunits of Sempra Energy, BP Plc, EDP Energias dePortugal SA, Southern Co and NextEra Energy Inc. (Reporting by Eileen Soreng in Bangaluru and Scott DiSavino inNew York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)
