Local property owners and residents addressed Jack County commissioners during the public forum portion of Commissioners Court Feb. 9 to petition them for assistance with noise abatement for the 60-turbine Barton Chapel Wind Farm. Tom Fillene pleaded with commissioners to take a trip down to the area and listen for themselves to the "obnoxious noise" coming from the 400-plus foot "monsters." Fillene stated he was speaking on behalf of other family members who lived under the wind turbines and were experiencing health issues due to the noise coming from the giant towers.

It was nearly a year ago that a sudden drop in the wind out in West Texas played havoc with the state's biggest electricity grid, as backup generation failed to quickly fill the gap and emergency safeguards barely contained what could have been a major power disruption. ...While the current financial crisis has curtailed investment in wind power, the growing certainty of U.S. legislation putting a cost on carbon emissions should keep wind power growing, other speakers said.

It all depends on 11 miles per hour. A few variances in the wind speed near Elwood could determine whether a windmill farm comes to Madison County. E.ON, a wind energy company that recently put up 600 wind turbines in Texas, has approached Madison County officials about the northwestern section of Madison County north of Elwood, showing interest in building a windmill farm at the location.

The state's electricity regulator has set in motion a process that will more than triple the capacity of infrastructure to carry electricity from West Texas wind farms to the state's big cities. The Public Utility Commission of Texas cleared 13 companies to build transmission lines at a total projected cost of nearly $5 billion - a move that could jump-start construction of additional wind turbines in the Concho Valley and across West Texas, local leaders said.

For the last decade, when most people have thought of renewable energy in Texas, they have usually thought of wind. But this year, solar and other forms of renewable energy are starting to get a place at the table at the Legislature. Legislation including incentives and rebates could pave the way ...Today, legislators and environmentalists will hold statewide news conferences to draw attention to solar energy.

Texas utility regulators on Thursday awarded nine companies rights to build $5 billion in new electric transmission lines to move power from windy areas to big cities like Dallas and San Antonio, a move aimed at doubling renewable energy supplies. ...But rapid addition of turbines in the western half of the state outstripped the ability of the existing high-voltage network to move the power to the state's largest cities, creating costly grid congestion in 2008.

A wind-farm developer with a troubled parent but big plans for the Panhandle tried Tuesday to confirm its commitment to the project. Babcock & Brown Renewable Holdings filed a letter Tuesday with the Public Utilities Commission explaining why it withdrew its letter of credit for a 1,000-megawatt wind farm it still plans to build in Carson and Gray counties.

After years of battling environmentalists worried about the mixture of towering windmills and one of the world's busiest migratory bird flyways, Babcock & Brown opened its wind farm on the Kenedy Ranch. The wind farm will sport a bird radar detection system that company officials tout as the first of its kind. The system can automatically stop the blades if the potential for a mass bird kill is detected.

Turbines at two new wind farms in Kenedy County have begun spinning, but it likely will be several more months before all 200 of them are operating, a spokeswoman for the two companies said. ...Officials with both companies have said they are not sure when all turbines will be operating. However, ERCOT says all of Gulf Winds' turbines are expected to be online by September 2010.

Texas' main electric grid operator is proposing $3 billion in new high-voltage transmission line projects over the next five years, according to a report released Wednesday. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas' annual report does not include the approximately $5 billion in projects proposed to connect West Texas wind power to parts of the state with the highest demand for electricity.

The VORTAC building is located about eight miles west of Portland. A radio beacon that airplane pilots can use to determine their proximity to Corpus Christi International Airport poses an obstacle to a $300 million wind farm under construction in San Patricio County. ...The federal agency has taken issue with the turbines' collective proximity to and potential impact on the radio navigation signal, housed about eight miles west of Portland, according to a notice of presumed hazard filed by the FAA.

Young County commissioners formally approved a tax abatement agreement Monday with British Petroleum ...After months of negotiation, the final agreement guarantees between $83,333 and $350,000 a year in lieu of property taxes. The proposal also guarantees that if the farm is built, Young County will receive a minimum of 50 megawatts. If more turbines are placed in the county, the money paid will rise incrementally.

Despite the protests of environmental advocates who spent months trying to halt the projects, two large-scale wind farms in South Texas are now operational. Many of the approximately 250 wind turbines that were expected to dot about 20,000 acres of Kenedy Ranch, north of Raymondville, are up and spinning ...Seeing the turbines starting to spin is worrisome, Kittelberger said. "I think they were built without public input, and built (with developers) knowing they would kill thousands of birds," he said.

A group that wants to slow the rush of wind turbines to the Texas Coast is asking the Federal Aviation Administration to require environmental studies for Texas wind farms. The Coastal Habitat Alliance has filed a petition with the FAA asking for the change in policy. This is the latest in a series of attempts the group has made to fight the emergence of wind farms on the coast, which is a major migratory bird route. The alliance worries about the impact thousands of wind turbines could have on the bird population.

A power producer typically gets paid for the power it generates. In Texas, some wind energy generators are paying to have someone take power off their hands. Because of intense competition, the way wind tax credits work, the location of the wind farms and the fact that the wind often blows at night, wind farms in Texas are generating power they can't sell. To get rid of it, they are paying the state's main grid operator to accept it. $40 a megawatt hour is roughly the going rate.

County commissioners paved the way Monday toward granting a tax abatement to wind power giant Duke Energy. ..."I didn't feel like it's a benefit to the citizens of Ector County," he said. Simmons said wind turbines deteriorate quickly, and chances are they won't be worth much once a 10-year abatement is up, leaving little to nothing to collect property tax off of. He also said there's no guarantee permanent jobs would be created in Ector County since the majority of the Notrees Windpower Project is located in Winkler County.

A proposed wind farm in northern Young County took a major step toward reality Monday when commissioners voted to approve a tax abatement plan for British Petroleum. After more than two hours of negotiations between BP and representatives from Young and Archer counties, Young County legal counsel Alan Carmichael announced an agreement had been reached.

When investor Boone Pickens put a hold on a huge wind power project in the Texas Panhandle that he had announced in the spring, he wasn't alone. A number of wind power developers and researchers say the ongoing credit crisis, together with transmission congestion in West Texas and falling natural gas prices, will slow the state's breakneck expansion of wind capacity. ...But there also is a peculiar wrinkle in wind power's finance that makes the current environment doubly challenging. "Most wind projects in the U.S. are funded by investors with an appetite for tax benefits," said David Groberg, vice president of Invenergy Wind, a Chicago-based company with 690 megawatts of wind capacity in Texas.

Garland is the latest North Texas city considering a zoning ordinance aimed at regulating wind energy devices that generate power for residential use. The measure is on Tuesday's council agenda. Other cities, including Grand Prairie, Waxahachie and Oak Point, already have such ordinances. Residential wind energy devices are rare in urban areas and may be too expensive or impractical for many homeowners. But city officials say they want to make sure rules are in place for the day when wind energy devices become more commonplace.

Gillespie County Commissioners adopted a resolution opposing the development of transmission line routes other than the approved Public Utility Commission (PUC) plan Monday morning during their regular meeting. Al Weinzierl, steering committee member for an informal group of Harper citizens opposed to the construction of private transmission lines, presented the resolution to the court. Landowners in Harper were first contacted in late July by Hilliard Energy, a Midland-based company trying to negotiate 180-foot land easements on behalf of Florida Power and Light (FPL) Energy for a private transmission line separate from the approved PUC line.