MONEYTALK: $5 bn for WIND POWER lines, Texas

by SOLARLIFE | August 1, 2008 at 11:57 am

133 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

Texas the state with Windpower for all, approved the power line plan from West Texas to urban cities. The largest investment in clean, renewable energy in U.S. history.
Texas citizens will have to assist with the plan's construction; paying an extra $3 to $4 per month on their bills for the next few years. However, they stand to recoup these costs in what they will save in energy bills later. Not surprisingly, energy companies are eager to jump on the bandwagon to build a large part of the superhighway.

You've got solar and wind . Those two resources have to be developed. So when you develop the wind, you can then remove natural gas from power generation and put it into a transportation fuel market. "Wind power is ... clean, it's renewable. It's everything you want. And it's a stable supply of energy. It's unbelievable that we have not done more with wind."

Meanwhile, China could well be on its way to blowing the U.S. out of the water when it comes to harnessing wind energy.
But the Chinese energy revolution has been quietly gaining strength, observers say. Like their American counterparts, Chinese tycoons are increasingly directing their investment into renewable power. Zhu Yuguo, ranks at 102 on the Forbes China Rich List, with a personal fortune of 5.71 billion Yuan and has invested heavily in the wind power industry

Several Texan transmission companies announced Monday they were forming a consortium to invest in the $5 billion cost of building new power lines to take advantage of the state's vast wind power.

The consortium, comprised of existing transmission operators, includes Dallas-based Oncor, the state's largest power delivery company, Electric Transmission Texas (ETT) and units of American Electric Power Co. among others.

Those new lines, dubbed by Oncor as a "renewable energy superhighway," will accommodate about 18,500 megawatts of wind generation by 2012-- enough energy to power 4 million homes.

Texas currently leads the nation in wind capacity at about 5,500 MW.

The companies are hoping to take advantage of a landmark ruling on Friday that gave Texas preliminary approval for a $4.9 billion plan to build transmission lines to carry wind power from West Texas to urban areas.