Some want renewable energy fast; others want to slow down to check on birds.

Allowing a 200-foot weather tower and the management of the Congressman Solomon P. Ortiz International Center will be discussed today by Port of Corpus Christi commissioners. Colorado-based Revolution Energy, LLC filed a permit for a two-year agreement with the port to install a meteorological tower to collect wind data. Tibor Hegedus, president and chief project developer for Revolution, said that if wind conditions are good, the company might invest in a wind farm. Commissioners will discuss leasing a quarter acre near the Corpus Christi Railroad Terminal office on the north side of the harbor. The location provides an ideal location for the tower, Hegedus said. “The visual impact of wind turbines sometimes raises questions of concern, but in a setting with smokestacks and such, it may mitigate concern,” Hegedus said. Commissioners also are expected to award a contract to Ovations Food Service, LP, a subsidiary of Comcast Spectacor, for the management and operation of the Ortiz Center. Comcast Spectacor is a Philadelphia-based sports and entertainment firm. Port officials previously said Comcast was being chosen because of its experience managing facilities. Comcast operates more than 60 facilities in the United States and Canada, including Nueces County’s Richard M. Borchard Regional Fairgrounds. The port looked for a company that would assume all responsibility for the center. Comcast, through its subsidiary Ovations Food Services, would handle accounting, event bookings and catering, he added. The center had been managed by Norris Training Systems Inc., based in Houston, and Water Street Inc. provided catering.

Tierra Energy LLC announced today that it has secured a contract to build a $55 million wind farm that will supply a Wyoming power company with renewable energy. Austin-based Tierra Energy's subsidiary, Happy Jack Windpower, will provide Cheyenne Light Fuel & Power with wind-generated energy over a 20-year period. Cheyenne Light Fuel & Power is a subsidiary of Rapid City, S.D.-based Black Hills Corp. (NYSE:BKH).

The price of progress is now considered a pain to some ears in Shallowater. Some folks there are upset about the new wind energy turbines now being used by Shallowater ISD. The school district turned them on back in January. They’re meant to save tax dollars, but some say the by-product, sound, is too much. Chad Dugger, a resident in the area says, “I can hear them when they turn off and turn back on. It’s not too much fun living here anymore.” The wind turbine is less than 300 feet from Dugger’s back yard.

AMARILLO, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 24, 2006--Xcel Energy has issued a request for proposals for about 40,500 megawatt-hours of annual renewable energy or renewable energy certificates to be generated from renewable technologies other than wind turbines.

Wind power developer Higher Perpetual Energy and turbine manufacturer DeWind are on their way to spending about $1.2 billion to boost wind energy in the Panhandle. The plan is for a total of 310 turbines across the region in three years. The pair are finishing two small wind farms, with two larger ones on the drawing board. "The small ones will be very profitable," said David Tatton, president of Higher Perpetual Energy. "But they are also test projects for the teams working together."

The Martifer Group, a Portugal-based global construction company, will build a $40 million wind-turbine tower manufacturing plant here, Gov. Rick Perry announced Monday. ...Attracting Martifer comes at a significant price -- more than $8 million in city, county and state incentives and abatements, with potentially $15 million more in rail improvements still to be negotiated between the state and the Texas Pacifico Railroad.

FAIRVIEW -- Advocates of the "small wind" generating business have landed another customer.

Dale Rankin was interviewed by the show for his perspective on wind energy and for his involvement in a lawsuit three years ago brought by Rankin and other Taylor County residents against FPL Energy, an affiliate of Florida Power & Light Co. "My name is used on the lawsuit title (Dale Rankin, et al, plaintiffs vs. FPL Energy, et al Defendants), though there are 11 of us who sued," he said. Rankin and the other plaintiffs lost the lawsuit in 2006, but they have appealed. The lawsuit sought to stop construction of wind turbines on nearby Elm Valley property as part of the Horse Hollow wind farm. ...Consultant Tom Tanton, vice president and senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, is serving as technical consultant for the appeal, Rankin said.

A Louisiana company plans to install the first of 50 wind turbine platforms 10 miles off Galveston Island this week, moving the project closer to its goal of becoming the first U.S. offshore wind farm. Galveston Offshore Wind, a division of Wind Energy Systems Technologies, plans to install a former oil production platform in about 50 feet of water in the coming days. At first weather-data-gathering instruments will sit on top of a tower some 300 feet above sea level, but by September the company hopes to have its first wind turbine in place.

The Texas attorney general is looking at tax breaks for wind farms, and early signs are he doesn't think the law allows them. "Fixtures and improvements owned by the wind turbine company as personal property would not be 'real property' that may be the subject of a tax-abatement agreement," according to a legal opinion issued by Attorney General Greg Abbott on Jan. 29. The wind industry wants a another chance. "We have asked the attorney general to review it and take a second look," said Paul Sadler, executive director of The Wind Coalition. "If they will not, it may be necessary to tweak it in the next legislative session."

As she sat at a small sunlit table by her apartment window, near the wheelchair and oxygen tank in the corner, Leona Morgan ticked off her monthly spending list. Rent: $550. Groceries: $300. Medicine for anemia, a heart condition and other ailments: $50 beyond what's covered by government health programs. Electric bill: $93.87 in August. "My income just barely covers what I have to spend," said Morgan, a sprightly, bone-thin 86-year-old, contemplating the possibility of soaring electric bills.

AES Corp. has begun construction on one of the nation´s largest wind farms near Abilene, Texas.

Interest by California-based AES Wind Generation in establishing a large-scale wind energy operation in Gillespie County is being reconsidered, it was learned here Monday. According to a City of Fredericksburg official who asked not to be identified, a letter from a company officer stated that AES SeaWest Inc. of San Diego has decided to discontinue pursuing wind energy in an area north of Fredericksburg that generally stretches between U.S. Highway 87 and RM 965. Instead, the city official related, the company has decided to focus on other areas in Texas. Prompting the decision, he added, was AES' concerns that sensitive species and bat colonies living in the area could be incompatible with large-scale wind energy.

Two companies that encountered political anger for their plans to use Chinese-built turbines on a wind farm in West Texas have announced plans to build a new turbine factory - in the United States. The U.S. Renewable Energy Group, an investment firm, and A-Power Energy Generation Systems, a Chinese turbine maker, said in a statement on Tuesday that they had signed an agreement to build "a new production and assembly plant in the United States that will supply highly advanced wind energy turbines to renewable energy projects throughout North and South America."

Not everyone favors the wholesale conversion of wind energy into electricity. Controversies and obstacles surround the development of wind energy in Texas. This article examines a few of these issues.

Participants in Monday’s bus tour through this area’s wind farms laughed as Greg Wortham reminded them that “100 percent of zero is zero.” Wortham, executive director of the West Texas Wind Energy Consortium, served as the group’s tour guide on the trip sponsored by the Floydada Economic Development Corporation. That particular part of the tour conversation was directed at royalty negotiations, but Wortham took a similar stand when the focus turned to economic development. As an example of the positive aspects of the wind energy industry on local economies, he talked about the Blackwell Consolidated Independent School District. Officials there had courted the wind industry and were reaping the benefits of that effort. Other districts, Wortham said, refused to work with the developers and those developers moved to the next county.

Austin's electric utility could soon reverse a long-standing practice of selling wind, solar and other renewable energy only to customers who choose to buy it, four Austin City Council members and a mayoral aide said this week. The council's ambitious goal of getting 30 percent of the city's electricity from renewable sources by 2020 could be in jeopardy if Austin Energy relies exclusively on its landmark GreenChoice program.

It’s windy, man. No, not that Windy Man, the disgraced concrete structure that state officials once planned to put around Lubbock highways. Rather, it’s the non-stop howling variety that is, more and more, bringing money to the region. Investors see potential in what people here have known for a long time about the South Plains and Panhandle - it’s windy, man. Some of the best wind in Texas hits ridge lines in the Davis Mountains and mesas in Taylor County near Abilene. That’s hundreds of miles of away. But there’s a small stretch of ideal wind pockets along the Caprock in Dickens, Floyd, Motley and Briscoe counties. “We have a lot of developers call us up and say, ‘Where’s nobody looking?’” said David Carr, assistant director at the AEI. “I don’t think there’s going to be that magic spot, but if there is one … that’s a pretty hot spot.”

TXU, if its buyout agreement is approved, will double the amount of money it spends on wind power purchases. The deal between the Texas utility giant and a group of investors led by Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co. is the largest private investment merger in U.S. business history at $45 billion. The buyout comes to $32 after TXU’s $13 billion in debt is paid off. Included in the group of investors are Texas Pacific Group, Goldman Sachs & Co., GS Capital Partners, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley. Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley are already investors in the wind market. Under the agreement, shareholders would receive $69.25 per share, 25 percent more than the closing price Friday when the deal was being finalized.