Texas to Deliver Wind Power to Millions of Urban Homes

Building the Green Economy, Zero-combustion paradigm ::

The state of Texas has approved a major new project to build transmission lines for wind power, with funding in the amount of $4.93 billion. Already the national leader with 5,300 megawatts of installed wind-power generating capacity, Texas will, when the infrastructure development is completed in 2013, have more wind-energy capacity than Germany presently does. The project is a major step toward freeing the American economy from high-contaminant power generation.

The New York Times reports that:

The planned web of transmission lines will carry electricity from remote western parts of the state to major population centers like Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. The lines can handle 18,500 megawatts of power, enough for 3.7 million homes on a hot day when air-conditioners are running.

The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen praised the plan, saying it should provide an $8 drop in electricity costs for every $3 invested in the new transmission network. T. Boone Pickens, the oil tycoon who is waging a national campaign to build wind-power infrastructure to provide at least 22% of all energy consumption in the US, has praised the initiative, but has also said his project will include its own transmission capacity, in part because it will be completed in 2011, well ahead of the major new transmission network.

Also according to the Times:

The transmission problem is so acute in Texas that turbines are sometimes shut off even when the wind is blowing.

“When the amount of generation exceeds the export capacity, you have to start turning off wind generators” to keep things in balance, said Hunter Armistead, head of the renewable energy division in North America at Babcock & Brown, a large wind developer and transmission provider. “We’ve reached that point in West Texas.”

Transmission capacity is a major obstacle to expanding wind-generation capacity nationwide, and Texas represents possibly the most hopeful place for advancing the cause, in part due to its massive wind resource and mounting investment infrastructure, but also because it enjoys its own power grid. Other states have to go through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in order to win approval for new infrastructure development, and may be hampered by bureaucratic lag-time, unless a major federal initiative to deliver new transmission capacity is undertaken.

J.E. Robertson @ August 11, 2008