The Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator (MISO), the regional grid operator for 11 U.S. states and the Canadian province of Manitoba, has announced that wind power output surpassed 10 GW in its service territory overnight last Friday.
The new wind peak output of 10.012 GW represented more than 25% of the generation output being used at the time. According to MISO, wind capacity in the grid operator's footprint has grown dramatically since 2006, and it now manages more than 11 GW of installed wind generation in service.
"Wind represents one of the fuel choices that helps us manage congestion on the system and ultimately helps keep prices low for our customers and the end-use consumer," says Joe Gardner, MISO’s executive director of real-time operations. "When we have significant quantities of wind being generated, we use less of other, more expensive, generation types to keep the system in balance.”
