NREL publishes new report on reducing wind energy curtailment

The US Department of Energy’s (DoE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has published a new report titled “Reducing Wind Curtailment through Transmissions Expansion in a Wind Vision Future”. The report highlights the need of new transmission lines to avoid curtailment of wind energy. It has been compiled while keeping the DoE's Wind Vision report (published in March 2015) as the basis to discover how the transmission system can manage the 35 per cent of electricity being sourced by wind power.

Under the report, the following findings have been highlighted:

•     Around 15.5 per cent of wind power would need to be curtailed due to grid limitations.
•     The launch of four 10.5 GW proposed lines to carry electricity from wind-heavy states such as Wyoming, Montana and New Mexico to states with less wind penetration — Idaho, Nevada and Arizona, could reduce the curtailment rate to 7.8 per cent.
•     Wind energy curtailment could fall to 0.5 per cent in every season if the electricity system had no transmission constraints.
•     The transmission system is the main cause of inflexibility in the system, rather than traditional generation sources.

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has welcomed the report, calling on states and the new federal administration to put transmission investment at the top of its agenda.