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| Texas Leads in (Green) Wind Power |
| 2013-10-16 |
| With little fanfare, Texas is just weeks away from wrapping up a nearly $7 billion effort to add vast amounts of wind power to its energy grid. Texas, you recall, has its' won energy grid - east part, west part, and Texas part. By the end of December, developers expect to flip the switch on the final electrical transmission projects built under the state's Competitive Renewable Energy Zone, or CREZ, initiative -- the yearslong effort to connect windy, largely secluded West Texas to growing cities that demand more power. Was (the late) House Speaker Jim Wright from west Texas? Is his wind still blowing around? Once finished, the build-out will stretch nearly 3,600 miles and will be able to send 18,500 megawatts of wind power across the state. That's about 50 percent more capacity than is currently installed in Texas -- the country's leader in wind energy production -- and more than three times as much as any other state. But...Texas is a RED state. How can they lead in wind power when Harry and Nancy are a thousand miles away? The new transmission projects don't run cheap. Texans will eventually shell out $6.8 billion to finance the project update released this week by the PUC. Electric ratepayers will bear the burden, but the commission has approved CREZ fees from just three transmission service companies, with other filings winding through the system. The new fees will likely add several dollars to a residential customer's monthly bill. The projects' estimated price tag has changed little over the past two years, but it is far higher than the $4.93 billion projection made in 2008. Inflation drove some of that increase, while the projects' changing shape was a bigger factor. In calculating the original estimate, researchers assumed the power lines would follow the most direct routes. As the process played out, however, regulators minimized intrusion by redrawing the routes to follow fences or roads. Those decisions added more than 600 miles of power lines that weren't originally planned. Ah, regulators - making everybody happy by making everybody pay more! |
| Posted by:Bobby |
| #5 Texas has lots of wind and not many eagles. And land is cheap. Not the worst place to spend money on wind power. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2013-10-16 20:29 |
| #4 Wind power = pure rent-seeking. A subsidy to land-owners via electricity consumers. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2013-10-16 19:32 |
| #3 Texas Leads in (Green) Wind Power ...and dead eagles, no doubt. Here in Californy, you can slaughter untold masses of eagles with your giant fans, but woe be on the poor soul who finds an eagle feather on the ground and puts it in its pocketses. |
| Posted by: Dopey Sinatra 2013-10-16 15:32 |
| #2 No place is perfect. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2013-10-16 15:01 |
| #1 driven by, among other things - a 2 cents per kwh federal subsidy (tax offset) - a complicated State subsidy that isn't easily calculated - heavy support from Texas farmers and ranchers who lease out their 'wind' to power companies - complicated regulatory mandates which are directly borne by power companies and indirectly by the customers of such companies |
| Posted by: lord garth 2013-10-16 14:09 |