The wind boom in Texas keeps rolling. With another good year for new wind farms in Texas during 2012, Texas saw its wind capacity rise 18% and reach 12,200 megawatts.
Though Texas is not a country, despite what some Texans think or wish, were Texas a nation, it would rank 6th in the world in total wind capacity. China, US, Germany, Spain, and India rank 1 through 5. Then comes Texas. http://www.earth-policy.org/data_highlights/2013/highlights37.
ERCOT is the grid operator for the vast majority of Texas, and wind provided 9% of all the power delivered to consumers within Texas during 2012 and may soon provide more than 10%. Those numbers make wind a force that drives down power prices within Texas. It also has added power to the ERCOT grid during a period when ERCOT has been scrambling for every real-time kilowatt-hour it can find to keep the lights on.
The size of wind in Texas makes it a global player. For sure, wind matters--a lot--in Texas, our second biggest state.
No comments:
Post a Comment