SETTING RECORDS
Renewable energy plays biggest role yet in powering Oklahoma
“We’re able to manage wind generation more effectively than other, smaller systems can because we’ve got a huge pool of resources to draw from.” Bruce Rew SPP senior vice president of operations
Early one morning near the end of March, nearly all of the energy being consumed in Oklahoma and across most of the nation’s mid-section was coming from a renewable resource.
The operator of the power grid serving Oklahoma and parts or all of 13 other Great Plains states announced the evening of March 29 that it met 90.2% of its demands for electricity earlier that day using power generated by renewable resources — an amount the Southwest Power Pool claims is a national record.
That record was set at 2:42 a.m., officials with SPP said.
SPP Senior Vice President of Operations Bruce Rew said the ongoing development of wind, solar and battery storage production facilities across the region the past 15 years made the achievement possible.
Within the grid operator’s footprint, Oklahoma has been leading the charge. According to the Advanced Power Alliance, the state last year was No. 3 in the nation for installed wind capacity and generated more electricity using the wind than any other state within SPP’s operational area.
“In a decade’s time, our region has gone from thinking of 25% renewable-penetration levels as nearly unreachable to a point where we regularly exceed 75% without reliability concerns,” Rew said. “We’re able to manage wind generation more effectively than other, smaller systems can because we’ve got a huge pool of resources to draw from.”
Oklahoma’s wind development helps break records
Mark Yates, a principal at Cornerstone Government Affairs, credits SPP’s record-setting achievement to
the activation of more than 1 gigawatt of wind energy alone inside of Oklahoma alone just over the past year.
When this new record was set, nearly 88.5% came strictly from wind generation facilities, beating a previous record of 84% set about a year earlier, SPP officials said.
The SPP grid set another record at 9:25 p.m. March 28, when renewable energy generators produced a record amount of 23,802 megawatts (MW), and set a record wind power production record of 22,915 MW at 10:34 p.m. the same day.
Wind farms in Oklahoma that have contributed to the growth in recent years include the Traverse wind project, which has a nameplate capacity of 998 MW and was the largest individual wind farm project built at one time in North America. It was activated just last month, completing the development of the 1,484 MW North Central Energy Facilities within the state.
Its other two components were the 199-MW Sundance wind farm, which began operating commercially in April 2021, and the 287-MW Maverick wind farm that started commercial operations in September.
The Public Service Co. of Oklahoma (PSO) paid $908 million as its share in costs to have the total project built with its sister utility, Southwestern Electric Power Co., after utility regulators in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana authorized those costs to be passed along to ratepayers.
PSO alone expects its customers will save about $1 billion in future electricity costs over the next three decades while the large developments are operating.
“PSO customers expect clean, renewable energy to be part of our energy mix, and the completion of this wind farm delivers on our commitment to meet those needs,” said Peggy Williams, PSO’s president.
SPP is a non-profit entity regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that serves both power generators and consumers served by cooperatives, utilities and private entities.
It is tasked to manage a transmission lines system, or grid, across an area that covers more than 550,000 square miles of the Great Plains from Oklahoma and parts of Louisiana, Texas and New Mexico, all the way to the U.S.-Canadian border to ensure reliable and competitively priced supplies of power are available to its system members.
SPP provides data on current usage and the mix of sources it uses to meet is load (demand) requirements at https://spp.org.
SPP currently has developers of an additional 66 gigawatts of renewable energy projects seeking approval to have their projects connected to its grid.
Renewables important to energy portfolio
Yates, a longtime spokesperson and advocate for renewable energy developers within Oklahoma, described this week’s SPP achievements as “remarkable,” adding he only expects the trend to accelerate as further renewable resources development efforts involving wind, solar and battery storage systems across the nation’s midsection are achieved.
Just this week, Enel Green Power North American announced it is building its 13th wind project in Oklahoma, the 300-MW Seven Cowboy wind project in Kiowa and Washita counties. It expects to begin operating the project before the end of this year.
Also, Enel is working on adding a total of 6.5 gigawatts of renewable energy in the U.S. and Canada between now and 2024, company officials have said.
Just within Oklahoma, developers are working on adding 11 gigawatts of solar energy to SPP’s grid.
Yates said renewable energy is helping power consumers across the Great Plains insulate themselves from spikes in costs for energy generated by natural gas that are happening as the conflict between Russia and Ukraine continue.
“Every electron produced by a renewable asset frees up a gas molecule that could be shipped to our allies around the globe. The energy diversity we have here in Oklahoma, across Texas and the footprint of SPP really speaks volumes on what it means to our energy security, frankly,” Yates said.