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.

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.

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.

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.

Sweetwater may not be the wind-energy capital for long. Pickens is in the process of building what could be the world's largest wind farm in the Texas Panhandle. "We're going to build a 4,000-megawatt farm in Pampa, and we've already bought the turbines for the first 1,000 megawatts, and we'll start construction in the summer of 2010," Pickens said. "We've put together all the land for it. The landowners are ready; we're ready." Pickens landed at Avenger Field at 2:21 p.m. with a crowd of about 50 gathered to see the man with an estimated net worth of $3 billion.

A spokesman for FPL Energy says a recent report by a local TV station saying all the turbine blades at Horse Hollow Wind Farm are being replaced is inaccurate. "We are not replacing turbine blades at Horse Hollow," said Steven Stengel. "Let me emphasize 'not.'" Instead, a "routine" repair will be made on the lightning receptors on 95 of the 421 turbines on the farm southwest of Abilene, Stengel said.

Texas has moved closer to drawing the final map for transmission lines to carry wind energy to the state's largest cities. ...The next step is a final hearing and a decision by the Public Utilities Commission of Texas on where to put transmission lines to connect West Texas wind farms with consumers in the rest of the state. ...Shell expressed disappointment with what it perceived as the PUC's timid attitude displayed at an earlier hearing. The PUC could no doubt hear the sound of wind, but it was "air being sucked from the room as the ERCOT and PUC staff witness panel left many gathered for the proceedings feeling deflated," according to Shell's brief.

A river. A park. A projected destination near downtown Dallas. The Trinity River project is expected to be a beauty. But winding along it could be something tall, environmentally green and what some consider intrusive. Discussion has started at city hall about lining a two-mile section of the Trinity toll road with wind turbines - 80 of them, all 80 feet tall. The Dallas City Council, as of this week, is studying whether to add wind turbines.

By year's end, developers expect to have about 250 huge wind turbines in place on Kenedy Ranch north of Raymondville, generating enough electricity to power approximately 90,000 homes. And more could be on the way. ...In May, the alliance filed a court petition seeking to stop the development. The federal judge who heard the case has not yet made a decision. The groups say that the ranch is on a major migratory pathway for birds, and they believe that tall, fast-spinning turbines on that pathway could lead to trouble. "We think there's a very high likelihood of catastrophic bird kills," said Elyse Yates, spokeswoman for the alliance.

Construction is well under way on two wind farms that, in the first phase, would cover about 20,000 acres of the historic ranch, the developers - Australia-based Babcock & Brown and Portland, Ore.-based Iberdrola Renewables, formerly PPM Energy - confirmed late last year. Still, environmental groups and the King Ranch haven't given up the fight to stop them. ...The Coastal Habitat Alliance is dogged in its efforts to stop the projects because the groups say they want more studies to be done, and for the public to have a say - even though the farms are on privately owned land. In its lawsuit, the alliance says the project should be subject to federal coastal-management rules, which call for environmental reviews of any electricity-generating plants.

Members of the Texas Public Utility Commission are struggling to decide how much new transmission should be built to take advantage of the state's abundant wind resource. Major power lines are needed to transfer wind generation from sparsely populated West Texas to Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, where electric demand is highest. Commissioners are weighing the benefits and costs of four transmission-route scenarios proposed by the Texas electric grid operator to accommodate from about 12,000 MW to as much as 25,000 MW over the next four years. ...Attorneys for residential and industrial customers urged the panel to look hard at promised cost benefits versus rising costs to build power lines. Transmission costs are paid by customers in areas with the most electric demand.

Colorado has lost out on a bid for a Vestas Wind Systems research center. Vestas, which opened a major blade-manufacturing plant earlier this year in Windsor, announced Monday it will locate the research facility in Houston. Colorado was the other finalist, according to Tom Clark, executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp.

Thousands of wind turbines in the US are sitting idle or failing to meet their full generating capacity because of a shortage of power lines able to transmit their electricity to the rest of the grid. The issue of transmission capacity will be high up the agenda as 10,000 wind power industry executives descend this week on Houston, Texas, where the shortage of power lines is hampering the state's alternative energy plans. ... A proposal for $6.4bn of new power lines linking new wind farms with the state's public electricity grid, whose cost will be borne mainly by consumers, is proving politically controversial. Wind farm developers are examining building their own private lines.

Wind power in Texas was mostly a curiosity in 2000 when the state first opened its wholesale electric markets to competition. About 300 turbines were spinning away in rural West Texas, creating a mere 200 megawatts of power. Today the state has 5,300 megawatts on line, 25 times more than in 2000 and enough power to light more than 1.5 million homes. ...With another 44,000 megawatts in wind projects on the drawing board, the forecast is for continued growth for years. But challenges, both economic and environmental, may be looming.