Barnett Shale

Texas sets another wind power record

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, operator of the state's biggest power grid, said last week's cold front blew in more than snow and ice. "The high winds that sent a chill through Texas last week also contributed to a new wind power record, with wind generation providing 8,638 MW (megawatts) of power at 3:11 p.m. on Dec. 25," ERCOT announced today.  That was nearly 26 percent of demand at he time. "This new record is 117 MW higher than the previous 8,521 MW record set on Nov. 10," ERCOT said. "ERCOT has more than 10,000 MW of wind power capacity, with more than 20,000 MW of additional wind generation under review."

ERCOT said more than 6,600 megawatts came from wind farms in West Texas and more than 1,600 megawatts from the Texas Coast.

-- Jim Fuquay

Texas wind power hits record output -- and subsidy

The state's biggest power grid says electricity provided by wind farms hit a record at 10:21 a.m. Nov. 10, when 8,521 megawatts made it to transmission lines. Lest the achievement draw uncritical cheers, however, along come the free-marketers at the Texas Public Policy Foundation in Austin to point out that big wind means big taxpayer subsidies.

According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which serves most of the state, wind power at its peak on Nov. 10, a Saturday, accounted for 25.9 percent of all electricity demand, which was at a relatively low 36,423 megawatts. The Wind Coalition, an industry group, also notes that wind power topped 6,800 megawatts the entire day and capped a three-day run that saw wind power remain near or above 5,000 megawatts. The previous record for wind power to the grid was 8,368 megawatts, hit on June 19 and again Nov. 9, the coalition said. As a percentage of electricity demand on ERCOT, the Nov. 10 share was just about triple wind's typical share, which was 8.5 percent for all of 2011, according to ERCOT data.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation sees another number: $22, as in the federal production tax credit for every megawatt-hour of wind power put on the grid. That means for, say, that three-day run when wind topped 5,000 megawatts, wind drew at least $7.92 million in subsidy (72 hours x 5,000 megawatts x $22 per megawatt-hour). In their November report, researchers Bill Peacock and Josiah Neeley figure wind's federal production tax credit in Texas at $597 million last year alone, even after accounting for the PTC's 10-year limit. Using past figures and making projections for future years, the report comes up with more than $4 billion in wind subsidies for the 10-year period from 2006 to 2015.

-- Jim Fuquay 

Editor's note: Since there have been some interesting comments on this, here's a link to the March 2012 report by the Congressional Budget Office on federal energy subsidies. The Star-Telegram also published a rebuttal from the American Wind Energy Association on Nov. 28, which likewise has drawn a number of comments. A link to that item is here.

Fortune: "The United States of Natural Gas"

Check out the current newsstand edition of Fortune, which you might say is a gas, gas, gas. The mag gives its cover to its main feature, headlined "The United States of Natural Gas," and its online site lists three stories on the same topic (but, alas, not links to the stories themselves). We'll have to go by the headlines and blurbs listed online, which give a good idea of what's inside: "Exxon's big bet on shale gas," "Will gas crowd out wind and solar?", and "America's new job machine is heating up."  A link to the magazine's online page on the issue is here.

-- Jim Fuquay

Texas still leads in wind power, industry group says

Wind power accounted for a third of all new electricity generation capacity added in the U.S. last year, the American Wind Energy Association said Thursday. The industry group’s annual report said 6,816 megawatts were added, boosting installed capacity 31 percent to 46,916 megawatts. Texas remained the No. 1 state in wind power, with 10,300 megawatts installed, AWEA said. Iowa was No. 2, with 4,300 megawatts, and California No. 3 with 3,900.

AWEA said Texas had 857 megawatts under construction at the start of 2012, second only to Kansas’ 1,189 megawatts. The group also estimated that Texas has between 6,000 and 7,000 jobs in wind power.Most of the state’s wind capacity in West Texas, but the Gulf Coast is also gaining installations. About 3 percent of U.S. power came from wind last year, a figure AWEA said the industry aims to grow to 20 percent by 2030. South Dakota led in terms of total electricity produced at 22.3 percent, followed by Iowa at 18.8 percent. Wind power last year produced 6.9 percent of all Texas electricity, and 8.5 percent of power on the grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which serves North Texas.

 

New Mexico company plans underground storage for wind farms

The knock on Texas' wind power industry, the largest in the country, is that it tends to fall off during hot summer days, the peak of the state's electricity usage. Now Chamisa Energy of Santa Fe., N.M., proposes using power generated at night to pump compressed air into salt caverns in the Texas Panhandle, then releasing it during the day to drive turbine generators (with a boost from also burning natural gas). It's been tried elsewhere but this would be the first location in Texas. For more, click here.

-- Jim Fuquay

Study: Texans should rely more on coal, nuclear

Here's Jim Fuquay's full S-T print story on recommendations from a Texas governor's task force that says Texans should rely less on expensive natural gas to generate electricity, and more on coal and nuclear plants.

-- Scott Nishimura