Wind power sets new daily records in Texas - twice this week alone.

[mc51tc]

In ultra-conservative Texas, wind power is now a big deal. This fact should slow the growth of coal fired plants in the state.

http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/03/27/5687340/wind-power-sets-new-daily-records.html

"Wind power in Texas topped 10,000 megawatts for the first time and also set a record for its share of electricity being used, the state’s largest electricity grid said Thursday.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said that at 8:48 p.m. Wednesday, wind farms connected to ERCOT’s transmission network generated 10,296 megawatts. That’s enough to power about 5 million typical Texas residences during a period of moderate electricity use, according to the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group.

The previous high was 9,689 megawatts.

The trade group said Wednesday’s peak was the most wind power ever on any regional power grid. The previous high was 10,012 megawatts in November on the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, which serves 11 states and one Canadian province.

ERCOT also said that at 3:14 a.m. Thursday, wind produced 38.4 percent of all the power on its grid, the highest share ever. ERCOT, which serves about 85 percent of Texas’ electricity demand, has more than 11,000 megawatts of installed wind capacity."

This story will probably come as a big surprise for many DU readers. Texas is leading the way in wind power sending this new energy to the populated big cities of Texas. Several billion dollars were spent by the state of Texas to build the transmission grid over the last ten years. For and oil and gas state, this story is amazing.

[dem in texas]

1. Not a big surprise to Texans

Texas has more wind than oil and has been building wind farms out in West Texas for years, there miles and miles of them. The state actually did something right by investing billions of dollars for transmission lines to the wind farms and now is reaping the benefits.