{"id":19443,"date":"2012-10-09T11:00:26","date_gmt":"2012-10-09T16:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=19443"},"modified":"2012-10-11T11:24:22","modified_gmt":"2012-10-11T16:24:22","slug":"how-winds-success-in-texas-could-pave-the-way-for-more-solar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/10\/09\/how-winds-success-in-texas-could-pave-the-way-for-more-solar\/","title":{"rendered":"How Wind’s Success in Texas Could Pave the Way For More Solar"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Photo by Melanie Conner\/Getty Images<\/p>

Wind energy has taken off in Texas, and it could help solar do the same.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Texas wind boom really got started over a decade ago, with the passage of a state senate bill that required renewables to be developed<\/a>, followed by an expanded version of renewable energy targets from the senate in 2005.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince then, we\u2019ve been off to the races,\u201d says Warren Lasher, the Texas grid\u2019s system planner. He appeared on a panel on solar and wind development in Texas at the SXSW Eco conference last week. Now there are about 6,500 wind turbines in Texas. You\u2019ll mostly find them in the panhandle, and some on the coast.\u00a0Texas is the biggest wind energy state in the country, and one of the largest wind energy producers in the world, with more wind capacity than France, Italy or Great Britain, as of the beginning of this year. (A federal tax credit \u2013 now being lambasted by some state officials and power companies \u2013 also helped.)<\/p>\n

Most of that wind is in the panhandle, the incubator for Texas\u2019 experiment with renewables. It can get quite gusty there. \u201cThe trees kind of tilt to the side up there,\u201d Lasher joked. \u201cAnd now transmission lines do, too.\u201d*<\/strong> They\u2019re designed to change direction with the wind (as it inevitably does), which reduces stress from torque on the turbine, resulting in less maintenance.<\/p>\n

But while there\u2019s plenty of wind \u2013 and now plenty of turbines \u2013 in the panhandle, there aren\u2019t that many people. 85 percent of the state\u2019s population now lives in cities, and that number is growing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe issue here is, the renewable energy centers are typically very different from the urban centers,\u201d Lasher said. \u201cSo that results in a cost: building transmission lines.\u201d<\/p>\n

To solve that problem, enter the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones<\/a>\u00a0(CREZ) transmission line projects. They run for over 2,300 miles and are currently pegged at a cost of almost $7 billion. \u201cBut that allows us to connect reliably 18,500 megawatts of wind,\u201d Lasher said. That\u2019s enough to power 3.7 million homes on a hot August day in Texas, and it’s enough capacity for nearly double the amount of turbines currently in the entire state. Once the lines are up and running, they\u2019ll be able to carry enough wind energy to supply a significant amount of the state\u2019s energy needs on an average day.<\/p>\n

And Lasher points out that those transmission lines could carry more than just wind. There\u2019s a lot of flat, sunny land in the panhandle \u2013 perfect for solar farms.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve learned a lot from wind integration here in Texas,\u201d Lasher says. \u201cAnd one of the great things about solar is that we\u2019re not first. We\u2019re going to be able to learn from others”<\/p>\n

One advantage to solar is that long-term forecasting will be easier than it is for wind, Lasher says. “But when a cloud comes over the power can drop very quickly,” he adds, so it will be important to have a responsive,<\/p>\n

Another advantage Lasher sees for solar in Texas in the coming years is speed. Solar farms can “be\u00a0built very quickly and easily,” he says, taking only nine to twelve months to build a large facility. And they’re flexible, too. “They can be built in small chunks and spread around the system,” Lasher says, “which does a lot for system reliability.”<\/p>\n

Rolando Pablos<\/a>, a\u00a0commissioner\u00a0of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, lent some vocal support to renewables at the panel. “The most important project is to make sure that we keep [renewables] at the table with the CREZ line system,” Pablos said, noting that the lines had been designed with renewable energy in mind. He added that he wants the commission to “get creative” with renewables in order to make sure they “stay in the conversation.”<\/p>\n

To that end, Pablos noted, the commission recently passed rules that will make it easier to bring in energy storage technology.<\/p>\n

“For me, it\u2019s important that we help the renewable industry with its research and development efforts,” Pablos said. “As prices drop, [renewable energy] becomes more competitive.”<\/p>\n

*This sentence originally referred to wind turbines. The correct object is transmission lines.<\/em><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New transmission lines in the panhandle could carry more than just wind. There\u2019s a lot of flat, sunny land there \u2013 perfect for solar farms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":19464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57],"tags":[14,30,41,32,24],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19443"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19576,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19443\/revisions\/19576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}