A lawsuit brought against the Taylor County Commissioners Court in April for granting what the plaintiff claims are illegal tax abatements to wind farms in the county was dropped Thursday with little fanfare. Tuscola resident Dale Rankin, an opponent of wind energy, filed the lawsuit in April alleging that wind energy equipment is not eligible for tax abatements under the state tax code. Rankin said he decided to "nonsuit," or essentially drop, the lawsuit because of what he called "procedural issues." However, he said he plans to refile the lawsuit.

Texas is requiring utilities to generate 5,880 megawatts of electric power from renewable sources by 2015 and 10,000 megawatts by 2025. No problem there. Wind power entrepreneurs have created a new energy boom in West Texas. There's already more wind electricity available than the limited transmission system in the region can handle. And hundreds of private companies have proposed new electric highways. They are waiting for the Public Utility Commission of Texas to determine who will get the cost-plus contracts and where the lines will be constructed.

The Peñascal Wind Farm in Kenedy County has its second customer, the South Texas Electric Cooperative, which will receive about a fourth of the power generated by the project. The cooperative recently signed a 15-year lease for 50 megawatts of energy from the wind farm, owned by Oregon-based Iberdrola Renewables, formerly PPM Energy. ...A key factor in the purchase of the power is that coastal winds blow on hot summer afternoons, peak electrical demand time in South Texas, said Michael Packard, general manager of the South Texas Electric Cooperative.

Following a July 17 selection by the Public Utility Commission of Texas, Gillespie County will be one of many counties in the state that will see new power lines in the next four to five years that will carry electricity from wind farms in West Texas and the Panhandle regions to the more metropolitan areas in Central and East Texas.

"It makes a terrible air raid noise," says Debbie Behrens, about the high-pitched whine made by the turbine. "It's driving me crazy." What's worse, is that Debbie and her son Lance both say that high-pitched hum is now causing them problems, physically. "You occasionally have the dizziness," explains Lance, "The ringing in the ears, I've never experienced the ringing in the ears." It turns out, there is a documented health condition associated with the noise generated by some windmills called: Wind turbine Syndrome. Symptoms include headaches, dizziness, nausea and ringing in the ears -- known as tinnitus.

Wind farms are becoming an increasingly popular way to generate green energy, but little is known about the ecological and socioeconomic effects of the towering windmills that have begun to dot parts of the landscape. What impact do the tall structures have on the birds and bats in the area? How do the wind farms affect local economies and governmental policy? And what do residents living in communities that are home to the farms think? Two Texas A&M University researchers have been tapped to join a study that is trying to determine those answers.

Oncor Electric Delivery, the Dallas-based utility that provides the transmission lines that serve most of North Texas, said Thursday that it hopes to build more than 1,000 miles of the lines needed to carry wind power from West Texas to the rest of the state. Oncor is one of five big utilities that have formed a consortium that proposes to build all of the estimated 2,400 miles of transmission lines included in a $5 billion plan approved last week by the Public Utility Commission, which picked it among several options. The other partners in the consortium are Sharyland Utilities, LCRA Transmission Services Corp., American Electric Power and MidAmerican Energy Holdings.

Julie Caruthers Parsley said Wednesday she will leave the Public Utility Commission on Sept. 2. Her resignation follows that of Commissioner Paul Hudson, who announced last month that he will step down from the three-member panel on Aug. 15. The commission makes decisions on electric and telecommunications policy. A week ago, Parsley dissented from a decision by Hudson and Chairman Barry Smitherman to build $5 billion in new transmission lines to bring power from wind farms in West Texas and the Panhandle to populated areas in north, central and southeast parts of the state.

"Everything he is outlining in this plan will pad his already ample bank account," said Jerry Taylor, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, who likened the plan to corporate welfare, since it calls for $1 trillion in government investment and an extension of tax credits for wind companies that are set to expire at the end of 2008. ...Ed Legge, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, a Washington-based trade association for electric-utility companies, including Duke and Exelon, said he expects consumers to eventually get a reality check on wind's shortcomings. "You can't depend on wind," Mr. Legge said. "Our customers are trained to expect the power is available and on. An intermittent source is automatically problematic, and that's what wind is right now. Wind stops blowing."

Herman J Schellstede, owner of an oil industry equipment company in New Iberia, is betting the Gulf of Mexico can produce enough wind to power thousands of homes and businesses. He's preparing to establish 62 huge wind turbines in the gulf off the coast of Galveston, Texas, that would produce 150 megawatts of power for electric generation. Some of the turbines will be mounted on abandoned platforms like the oil rigs Schellstede constructed in the gulf for 42 years.

A federal clock is ticking on an ambitious Texas Public Utility Commission plan to build transmission lines to funnel wind energy from West Texas to metropolitan areas. The wind energy industry revolves around a production tax credit that expires Dec. 31. After more than one false start, there is no guarantee Congress will extend it. Expansion will halt, some warn, if lawmakers don't take action this summer. "We don't want lines to just be standing out there," Sweetwater Mayor Greg Wortham said of the planned transmission lines. Wortham is also director of the West Texas Energy Consortium. Until a turbine is producing juice -- no credit.

The transmission problem is so acute in Texas that turbines are sometimes shut off even when the wind is blowing. "When the amount of generation exceeds the export capacity, you have to start turning off wind generators" to keep things in balance, said Hunter Armistead, head of the renewable energy division in North America at Babcock & Brown, a large wind developer and transmission provider. "We've reached that point in West Texas." ...The exact route of the transmission lines has yet to be determined because the state has not yet acquired right-of-way, according to Mr. Withrow of the utility commission. The project will almost certainly face concerns from landowners reluctant to have wires cutting across their property.

Pecos County Commissioner for Precinct 3 Jay Kent speculated aloud about how much money the county was losing, but after a discussion the Commissioners Court approved unanimously Monday a tax abatement for the Sherbino II Wind Farm LLC, a development venture of British Petroleum Alternative Energy. The court approved the agreement with amendments. One removes a clause that requires an invoice be sent to BP each year, placing the onus for payment by Jan. 31 of each year of the abatement upon BP; the second specifies a public notice to other taxing entities.

Texas officials gave preliminary approval Thursday to the nation's largest wind-power project, a plan to build billions of dollars worth of new transmission lines to bring wind energy from gusty West Texas to urban areas. ..."We will add more wind than the 14 states following Texas combined," said PUC Commissioner Paul Hudson. "I think that's a very extraordinary achievement. Some think we haven't gone far enough, some think we've pushed too far."

A divided Public Utility Commission gave preliminary approval today to construct $5 billion in transmission lines to bring wind power from West Texas to urban areas. The project is expected to cost average household consumers about $4 a month. It should boost the state's wind farm business, already the largest in the nation, to even greater levels. It would increase capacity for wind generation to 18,456 megawatts. The plan, which is expected to be finalized later this month, is a middle ground between five scenarios ranging from $3 billion to $6.4 billion.

Eight legislators from the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex sent a letter to the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) Monday urging the Commission to opt for aggressive expansion of electricity transmission capacity from West Texas to reign in soaring electric bills and prevent further pollution of local air. ...The letter calls on the PUC to adopt Scenario 3 when it meets Thursday to continue its discussions regarding which scenario will offer the greatest benefits to Texans for moving electricity from the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) in West Texas and the Panhandle.

TexDOT says the Ralph Fair Road bridge over Interstate 10 is hopelessly damaged and will have to be demolished and replaced, a job which is expected to take several months. The bridge has been closed since late June after a truck hauling a propeller wing for a wind power turbine in west Texas slammed into one of the bridge abutments. Engineers say it will be impossible to repair the bridge.

"You're building, typically the projects way out in the middle of nowhere, long distances from the load centers," said Lisa Linowes of WindAction.org.

Indeed, the flat Midwest is where the country's wind blows the most - the so-called "wind alley."

But cities along the coast are where the majority of people live. So getting that power to the people would mean a massive, multi-billion-dollar grid restructuring.

Plus, winds die down in the summer, when demand is the highest. Some turbines have been known to kill migratory birds. And, not everyone welcomes such a sight in their backyard.

Today, Pickens will take the wraps off what he's calling the Pickens Plan for cutting the USA's demand for foreign oil by more than a third in less than a decade. To promote it, he is bankrolling what his aides say will be the biggest public policy ad campaign ever. The website, www.pickensplan.com, goes live today. ...Of course, Pickens also has a particular solution in mind. Wind. And natural gas.

There is such a thing as too much wind power. Sure, wind is among the cheapest, cleanest fuels generating the power Texans increasingly demand. But as officials brag about the state's status as the No. 1 wind producer in the country, they're also debating how much is too much. Building the transmission lines to bring wind power from rural West Texas to population zones will cost billions. And even with enough transmission lines, the on-again, off-again nature of wind can leave coal and natural gas-fired power plants scrambling to fill in the gaps. For electricity companies, predicting wind patterns is a new art. ...The arguments against supporting too much wind are swaying PUC Chairman Barry Smitherman. Last month, he said he'd been leaning toward the scenario to build the largest amount of transmission, but after hearing arguments from various parties, he favors a more modest scenario.