Renewable energy served 90.2% of the electricity demand in the Southwest Power Pool grid on March 29 at 2:42 a.m., reportedly setting a record for a U.S. regional transmission organization.
SPP said that 88.5% of total demand was served by wind during that moment, beating the previous record of 84% set on May 8, 2021.
Bruce Rew, the grid operator's senior vice president of operations, applauded SPP's ability to significantly scale renewable energy resources -- namely wind -- without sacrificing reliability.
“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," Rew said.
SPP serves 14 states in the middle of the U.S., stretching from the Canadian border in Montana and North Dakota to parts of New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana.
The SPP generator interconnection queue has 66 GW of renewable energy resources waiting to connect to the grid.
