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Feb 1, 2010

Texas blowing them away ‘09 wind power output tops in US

Texas blowing them away
'09 wind power output tops in US
By Elliott Blackburn
Morris News Service

Texas developers added more than twice as much wind power as any other state
last year, according to the latest industry report.

Farms with a capacity of more than 2,290 megawatts of wind power began
production last year, easily besting the 905 megawatts added in Indiana, the
next-closest competitor, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

That left the state keeping a sizable lead in the nation for wind
production, despite concerns heading into the year that the industry would
struggle, according to the report.

The numbers were a bit of a surprise, considering an economy that made
finding credit difficult and an electric grid taking almost more power than
it can handle for the next few years, said Michael Giberson, an energy
economist at Texas Tech University's Rawls College of Business.

"I thought, surely, that was going to stop things," Giberson said. "Maybe
there will be a little bit of a lull now, as projects that were in the
pipeline finish."

But any lull should be just a hiccup, he added, as transmission lines built
to handle the large and unpredictable wind energy market begin to cross the
state during the next few years.

"It is very clear that the transmission constraint will have a larger and
larger impact on the annual development in Texas," said Elizabeth Salerno,
with the association's Industry Data and Analysis department.

The state's massive project to install transmission lines feeding Panhandle
wind power to the rest of Texas would need to come online to keep
encouraging wind energy development, she said.

The year's biggest listed project stood far from the Panhandle - a
283-megawatt farm along the Texas coast. Valero added to a farm in Sunray,
northeast of Dumas, and a 197-megawatt farm sprang up outside Big Spring.


Comments

Posted by debt relief on 03/01  at  01:50 PM

usa, it’s one the biggest energetic power. they have an incredible resource on eoliens.!

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