July 25, 2008—The Public Utility Commission (PUC) of Texas recently approved a plan to build transmission lines to carry up to 18,456 megawatts (MW) of wind power from West Texas and the Texas Panhandle to metropolitan areas of the state, according to a newsletter from the US Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).
The PUC estimates that the new lines will be in service within four or five years, at which point residential customers will be charged about $4 per month to pay off the cost of the transmission lines.
According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which oversees the state’s electrical grid, the selected plan includes 6,903 MW of wind power capacity that was either in service or nearly in service when ERCOT started preparing its report in September 2007. For that existing and near-term future wind power capacity, the new transmission lines will reportedly provide greater access to markets, allowing a more efficient and economical use of those wind power resources.
In addition, the plan allows the development of 11,553 MW of new wind power. That includes 2,393 MW of wind power in the “Panhandle B” zone, which is where a company founded by T. Boone Pickens plans to eventually build the world’s largest wind power plant, with a generating capacity of 4,000 MW. The 1,000-MW first phase of that project, the Pampa Wind Project, is expected to go online by early 2011.
