A study of recent changes in southwest power pool and electric reliability council of Texas and its impact on the U.S. wind industry

Due to the increased penetration of renewable energy resources, there has been a lot of activity in the regional transmission organizations such as development of new standards, protocol revisions, new study requirements, changes to modeling procedures etc., in the last five years with a special focus given to wind energy. The key objective of this paper is to identify the impacts and the immediate technological and market related improvements required by the wind industry as a result of such changes in Southwest Power Pool (SPP) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). The paper documents the most important activities by following the higher-priority committees, work groups and task forces in both companies along with some of the special projects or initiatives such as sub-synchronous control interaction study, primary frequency response, hub concept and other modeling improvements related to wind energy. The paper provides an analysis of the impact of each change resulting in technology upgrades to wind turbines, modeling improvements by turbine manufacturers and policy/market changes affecting wind farm developers. Finally the paper provides recommendations regarding the requirements and capabilities which the future wind farms and wind turbines need to possess.