Last May I attended an international meeting on wind energy in Portugal, where 100 percent of that country’s electricity demand was met by renewable energy—a combination of solar, wind, and hydro—for four days. There have also been several short periods in which wind generation alone has exceeded 40 percent of demand in U.S. regional systems in places like Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado.
Some people think wind has value only in limited locations and will play a small role in meeting our overall energy needs (see “The One and Only Texas Wind Boom”). Instead, a history of cost reductions combined with decades of deployment and operating experience are bringing wind power to the cusp of transforming our electricity industry.
Yes, there are challenges. Wind is unlikely to ever be our sole source of electricity. Because the wind is variable, it creates some problems for the electric grid, but they’re not insurmountable. My organization has done studies that have looked into what would happen if wind and solar generated a third to a half or more of U.S. annual electricity demand, and we’ve found that there are ways to mitigate this natural variability by using flexible generators, such as natural gas or hydropower plants, and by coördinating operations over large geographic areas. In places like Denmark, Portugal, and Ireland, operators are already successfully managing the variable power generation that comes from wind and solar plants.
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