The restless wind — energy production in Texas

by Stuart Hampton, October 30th, 2007, 6:05 am

“I saw miles and miles of Texas” croons Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel. And what fills the big empty space of the second-largest state? Wind, that’s what.

And wind does not just blow tumbleweeds across Hank Williams‘ lost and lonesome highways. In an energy market hungry for alternative and clean sources of power generation, wind power in Texas is an emerging play that has attracted the attention of investors, including several traditional power producers.

For the past couple of years Texas has been the country’s leading wind energy producer. The state has more than 3,300 megawatts (MW) installed and about 1,246 MW under construction. In July 2007, the Public Utility Commission of Texas approved additional transmission lines enabling a further 25,000 MW of wind energy to be developed in remote rural areas to serve the state’s cities by 2012.

The American Wind Energy Association calculates that about two-thirds of the predicted growth of wind energy generation in the US will take place in Texas, where three of the five largest wind farms in the US are located. The world’s largest wind farm, Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center, was completed by FPL Energy (a unit of the FLP Group)  in late 2006. The country’s second-largest wind farm, the Sweetwater wind project (built by Catamount Energy and Babcock & Brown), achieved the go-ahead for commercial operation in May. Other power companies with wind energy interests in Texas include American Electric Power, AES, Austin Energy, and Edison Mission.

And if Texas’ vast land resources aren’t enough, the state can take advantage of a deal made when Texas joined the Union in 1845. While most other states have territorial waters that extend out three miles from their coastlines, Texas’ extend out 10 miles.  Not only are average wind speeds at sea higher than on land, when located 10 miles out to sea the wind farms promise to be less visually intrusive than those being built closer to coasts in other states. In 2006 Texas positioned itself to launch the first US offshore wind project with the announcement of a multi-million dollar lease agreement for a wind farm in the Gulf of Mexico. The Texas General Land Office signed a deal with project developer Superior Renewable Energy that gives the company the rights to 39,900 acres of submerged lands in the Gulf of Mexico, just off the coast of Padre Island and south of Baffin Bay. In a similar deal in 2007 Wind Energy Systems Technology agreed to pay Texas a minimum of $132 million over 30 years for the rights to four tracts totaling more than 73,000 acres.

Some innovative companies are even trying to graft the new industry on the remains of the old oil industry infrastructure by building turbines on the foundations of the several thousand old platforms/defunct oil rigs that dot the Gulf of Mexico.

Wind power is not without its critics. Some local residents of wind farms object for aesthetic reasons. Some environmentalists believe that the wind plant turbines kill birds in unacceptable numbers. American Wind Energy Association dismisses the latter argument as unfounded.

So the next time a Blue Norther whips through Texas, just remember, It is an ill wind that blows no one any good. And while that cold blast may be chilling you, it also is cranking out megawatts and profits for power companies and supplying clean power to Texans.