James Oborne, 5 April 2013 (Dallas Morning News)
“…Designed to transmit enough electricity to power half of Texas in the spring months…[3,500 miles of high-voltage transmission lines connecting wind farms in western Texas with electricity-hungry cities to the east] is on schedule to finish [aftet eight years of planning and building] by the end of the year. But with cost overruns and fewer wind generation projects than originally projected, the $6.8 billion soon to be borne by ratepayers is again falling under criticism…Construction costs are estimated at almost 40 percent above the $4.9 billion originally budgeted…[due to] a spike in steel prices and longer routes for the lines because of difficulties in negotiating with landowners… “Further complicating matters, the transmission lines were built to carry loads of more than 18,000 megawatts, far beyond the generation capacity at the time, under the expectation that the project would accelerate wind farm creation in West Texas…So far around 9,000 megawatts of wind generation capacity has come on line in the region…[because] low wholesale electricity prices from the booming natural gas market and difficulty getting financing for wind farm projects [has slowed wind growth]…”
click to enlarge“There’s hope the new lines [which could cost ratepayers about $6 per month] could spur another wind power boom…Right now there is a bottleneck on the existing transmission lines, at times forcing wind farms around West Texas and the Panhandle not only to lower their prices but to pay the utilities to take their electricity… “Earlier this year Google invested $200 million in a 161-megawatt wind farm in the Panhandle, and advocates say they expect more deals once the lines are fully operational. Already, wind companies have 20,000 megawatts worth of projects under study in Texas, according to ERCOT. And while history suggests maybe a quarter of those will actually be built, regulators and the industry itself are confident eventually generation will meet the capacity of the new lines…”
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