Texas Hits New Record For Wind Power Generation

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Texas hit a new record for wind power this week.

Did it seem windy to you last night? Because at 8:41 p.m. Wednesday, the Texas grid set a new record for wind power generation, reaching 7,599 megawatts.

The previous record was set the day before, with 7,403 megawatts. Before that, the biggest day of wind power generation in Texas was Oct. 7, 2011, with 7,400 megawatts of power.

When the record was reached, wind was supplying 22 percent of the grid’s power. That’s not actually a record, it got up to 26 percent last December.

The wind power was partly from the coast, but most of it came from West and North Texas.
“Coastal wind farms supplied 1,018 MW of the new record, along with 6,581 MW from the west and north zones,” the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state grid, said in a release. There is nearly 10,000 megawatts of wind power capacity on the Texas grid, more than any other state.

ERCOT says that it just added 9 more megawatts of wind power last month, and that “more than 18,000 MW of wind generation projects are currently under review.”

You can check out more on Texas wind generation at ERCOT’s Daily Wind Integration Reports.