SPP Sets North American Record for Wind Power

  
Southwest Power Pool set a wind power penetration record of 52.1 percent at 4:30 a.m., Feb. 12, becoming the first regional transmission organization (RTO) in North America to serve more than 50 percent of its load at a given time with wind energy.
The milestone beats a previous North American RTO record of 49.2 percent that SPP set April 24, 2016. Wind penetration is a measure of the amount of total load served by wind at a given time.
As recently as the early 2000s, SPP’s generating fleet included less than 400 MW of wind, and for years, wind was reported in the “Other” category in SPP’s fuel mix data. Wind is now the third most-prevalent fuel source in the SPP region. It made up approximately 15 percent of the organization’s generating capacity in 2016, behind only natural gas and coal.
Installed wind-generation capacity increased in 2016 alone by more than 30 percent — up 4,000 MW from 12 GW to more than 16 GW.
source: https://www.greentechmedia.com