Texas invests in a wind-power future (San Antonio)
Texas currently has more wind energy than it can handle.
Driving across West Texas and north to the Panhandle, one will see thousands of giant wind turbines that have been set up to harvest the energy from the endless gusts of wind that sweep across the plains. But more often than not, many of those wind turbines will be idle as the wind howls around them.
The reason for this, according to Russel E. Smith, executive director of the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association, is that the turbines generate more electricity than the available transmission lines can handle. So to keep from overloading the system, they have to turn some of the turbines off during intervals with high winds.
“We currently have the capacity to generate 10,000 megawatts of energy from the wind, but we don’t have the transmission lines available to carry that much electricity,” Smith says.
The good news, however, is that more transmission lines are on their way, he adds.
Two years ago, the Public Utility Commission of Texas approved a plan to construct new transmission lines that will eventually transmit 18,456 megawatts of wind power from West Texas and the Panhandle region to metropolitan areas of the state. The estimated cost of the project is $4.93 billion and it is expected to take four to five years to complete.
Read the full story in the San Antonio Business Journal.
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