Submission + - Wind Power Takes Off in Texas
Hugh Pickens writes: "The NY Times has a good story on the growth of wind power in Texas where wind turbines as tall as 20 story buildings and blades longer than a football field already supply more than 3 percent of the state's electricity, enough to supply power to one million homes. T. Boone Pickens is spending $10 Billion to build the biggest wind farm in the world on 150,000-acres in Texas' Panhandle that will generate 4,000 megawatts. "I like wind because it's renewable and it's clean and you know you are not going to be dealing with a production decline curve," Pickens says. "Decline curves finally wore me out in the oil business." Although there has been some opposition to wind power in the state, Texans see the sleek new turbines as a welcome change in the landscape. "Texas has been looking at oil and gas rigs for 100 years, and frankly, wind turbines look a little nicer," said Jerry Patterson, the Texas land commissioner. The part of the United States with the highest wind potential is a corridor stretching north from Texas through the middle of the country but power is needed most in the dense cities of the coasts, and building new transmission lines over such long distances is certain to be expensive and controversial. "We need a national vision for transmission like we have with the national highway system," said wind advocate Robert Gramlich. "We have to get over the hump of having a patchwork of electric utility fiefdoms.""