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US' Southwest Power Pool sets new wind peak record at 10,783 MW

https://www.chemnet.com   Mar 28,2016 Platts
The US' Southwest Power Pool set a new wind peak of 10,783 MW at 6 am CDT (1100 GMT) Monday, breaking the previous record of 10,280 MW set February 17. Overall load during Monday's record wind generation was about 28,350 MW, SPP spokesman Derek Wingfield said in an email Tuesday.

This is below the record penetration rate of 45.1% on March 7, according to SPP. The highest wind penetration Monday morning was 41.7%. In comparison, on February 17, wind accounted for 43.3% of load at the time of the previous record.

As for the factors that have contributed to the recent wind records, Wingfield provided the following statement from March 7 by Bruce Rew, SPP vice president of operations.

"Last year we added a substantial amount of new wind generation to our footprint, some of which came online in the fall so we are just now starting to see those additions' full output. Also in 2015 we expanded our footprint with the integration of Western Area Power Administration's (WAPA) Upper Great Plains Region, Basin Electric Power Cooperative and Heartland Consumers Power District (collectively called the Integrated System), which brought 900 MW of wind to our system," Rew said.

Total installed and available wind capacity in SPP is 12,397 MW, Wingfield said previously.

As of the end of last year, SPP had 33,819 MW of wind capacity in development, including projects under study, those with executed interconnection agreements and those under construction, he added.
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