Record wind power production in Texas

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Wind power development has been gaining traction lately, and Texas is leading the way.

With more active wind turbines than ever, the state recently set a new record for wind power production.

On Nov. 10 at 10:21 a.m., wind gusts faster than 45 mph combined with a growing amount of wind turbines in the state to set a new record for the most wind power Texas has ever produced.

Most of the state’s wind power facilities are located in the Texas Panhandle. Output can vary widely from day to day, depending on wind speed.

“The actual wind power that we receive on any given day can be as low as a couple-hundred megawatts, to as high as our recent record of more than 8,500 megawatts of wind,” Robbie Searcy of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said. “[Wind power] was serving about a quarter of the power use of ERCOT at the time on Saturday morning, November 10.”

To better distribute all of the wind power from windy areas in the Panhandle to the metropolitan areas that need it most, 2,400 miles of high-voltage lines are currently under construction across the state. The project is set to be complete by the end of next year.

The 8,521 megawatts of wind power in the state’s grid on Nov. 10 represented 26 percent of all the power being used in the state – enough to power over 4 million homes.