Kerr County commissioners have sent a message to Lower Colorado River Authority Transmission Services Corporation officials regarding possible routes for transmission lines in the area. "Go to another county," said Pct. 1 Commissioner Buster Baldwin during Monday's commission meeting. County commissioners also asked for the transmission lines to follow existing rights-of-way.

The rush of wind turbines is still a few years away, but questions about the best way to make them pay are here today. The uncertainty already has sparked a growing niche practice for law firms. Local attorneys primarily represent landowners who want to know the contracts they are signing with wind energy developers are fair. Not all the questions are easy to answer.

The Lower Colorado River Authority Transmission Services Corporation has proposed to construct several new electric transmission line facilities and add new transmission lines in Kerr and surrounding counties. The project is one of several recently approved by the Public Utility Commission of Texas, and is intended to allow delivery of electric power produced from wind generators in West Texas and the panhandle known as “competitive renewable energy zones.”

Concerned about the possible effects of proposed wind power legislation on their property rights, some Fredericksburg area landowners have voiced opposition to a bill by State Senator Troy Fraser that would allow the Gillespie County Commissioners' Court to restrict wind farm construction. "Once the bill was filed, the phones started lighting up." Fraser said. "We need to gauge both support and opposition."

Llano and Gillespie counties may be granted regulatory teeth regarding the placement of wind turbines this legislative session. The Llano County Commissioners Court passed a resolution Monday supporting a bill that, if passed into law, would allow counties to prohibit or regulate construction of wind energy electric-generating facilities in all or part of the county. State Sen. Troy Fraser of Horseshoe Bay introduced S.B. 1226 and S.B. 1227 in February.

An energy company is considering adding as many as 30 windmills to the Texas City skyline. City commissioners on Wednesday approved a resolution supporting a study by Duke Energy of the feasibility of building a windmill farm at the site of the county water reservoir at state Highway 146 near Attwater Road in north Texas City. The cost of the project is estimated at more than $200 million.

The Gillespie County Commissioners' Court will be given the power to restrict wind farm construction if legislation filed Monday by State Senator Troy Fraser makes it through the Texas Legislature. "I think we have a good chance of getting it through my committee and through the senate," Fraser said. "It is very clear that the county judge and commissioners are asking for this authority."

Mesa Power said Monday it's cutting back on plans for a massive wind farm in the Panhandle, but is ready to move forward on the first phase of the project. ...Mesa said previously it will rely on the federal production tax credit for wind farms. Congress just renewed the program, which provides as much as one third of the income earned by wind farms, for three years.

Senator Troy Fraser (R-Horseshoe Bay) filed legislation on Monday to authorize the Gillespie County Commissioners Court to regulate the construction of wind energy electric generating facilities in the unincorporated areas of the county. Senate Bill 1226 specifically will allow Gillespie County to prohibit or restrict the location of a facility in all or part of the county.

The West Central Texas area, centered on Abilene and Sweetwater, may be the wind energy capital of North America, but the wind farms have yet to meet their full production capacity. And they won't for at least a few more years. That's because the construction of wind farms has outpaced the capacity of transmission lines to ferry the energy to market. ...How much electricity generation is lost by having to curtail production for lack of transmission capacity is uncertain, said Roark.

The company that owns one of two wind farms in Kenedy County is going out of business. Australia-based investment firm Babcock & Brown, which developed the Gulf Wind project south of Sarita, has agreed to sell its assets over three years to repay about $2 billion in debt, Matt Dallas, Babcock & Brown spokesman, said. After these assets are sold, the firm will cease to exist, Dallas said.

Officials in Colleyville and Southlake have heard from residents interested in installing turbines on their property to reduce their electric bills and carbon footprints. Both cities are now looking at ways to regulate the structures before they begin transforming neighborhood landscapes. ...The turbines typically cost $9,000 to $15,000 to purchase and install - money that may take 15 years or more to get back through energy savings, according to several turbine dealers.

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.