After record growth in U.S. wind power generation capacity in 2009, top industry executives at the American Wind Energy Association conference were pessimistic Tuesday about prospects for a strong repeat performance this year. But former President George W. Bush cheered up conference attendees with bullish comments on the future of renewable energy.

General USA Texas

Generating electricity from wind is growing fast enough that as more wind farms are brought online, more are being built. Depending on your point of view, that is either a good or a bad thing. ...Wind is not replacing baseload, it is replacing peaking generation. Not only that, in Texas, wind farms are exempt from rules that would force them to make payments to the system operator if they can't deliver power when the wind stops blowing. Natural gas burners say everyone ought to play by the same rules.

General USA Texas

"We've used Texas as the poster child for wind energy for the last five to six years," American Wind Energy Association official Kathy Belyeu told a group of wind industry professionals Tuesday. ...A major rap on wind power is that in West Texas and the Panhandle the wind often blows little during peak periods for electricity consumption but blows more at night, when power demand is lower. That's a problem.

General Texas

Turbines are popping up all over tornado alley - nearly 1,400 in windswept Nolan County alone. Every year, about 1,000 twisters crop up across the country. But no one knows what would happen if a high-intensity tornado struck a turbine.

General Texas

Hundreds of miles of transmission line proposed Tuesday will ease the flow of cheap power in and out of the city's main source of energy. Lubbock customers will pay an unknown share of the $1.4 billion in projects directors of the Southwest Power Pool proposed stretching through Oklahoma and Kansas. ...But the real target are the huge markets along each coast, he said.

General Oklahoma Texas

"We want to take our land and not change our farms and ranches, and make additional income," said Randy Darnell, who has leased about 1,000 acres to Buffalo Wind. "Wind looks inevitable, and we want to participate." Darnell and landowner Todd Vincent started talking about attracting a developer about two years ago.

General Texas

While Texas continues to enjoy its top U.S. ranking for installed wind capacity, not all power generators operating within the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) are pleased with its growing prominence. In the past year, several initiatives relating to grid interconnection and the operational performance of wind turbines have been pushed through ERCOT's regulatory channells in an effort to stunt the proliferation of wind development in the state.

General Texas

The movement toward investing in green energy sources has been picking up steam, helped by a big push from the White House to "make America energy-independent." But the movement also has brought out scam artists attempting to ride on its popularity and rip off unsuspecting investors.Not every alternative-energy investment is a rip-off, of course, but investors have to be able to tell the difference.

General USA Texas

Wind farm developers want to put up $25.8 million to prove they really want to start building in the Panhandle, but it's not that easy. The Public Utility Commission of Texas couldn't take the vote Thursday that would have started the clock for getting Panhandle wind farms plugged into the state's grid. The holdup is a lawsuit that forced the PUC to put the brakes on the schedule to begin transmission construction.

General Texas

Chinese wind power provider A-Power Energy Generation Systems(SPWR) and its U.S.-based partners announced on Thursday plans to build a wind turbine production and assembly plant in Nevada that will create up to 1,000 permanent jobs for the state and more jobs during the construction phase. The announcement about the Nevada plant was notable for two reasons: the selection of Nevada as home state for the wind energy plant, and the political power broker who is associated with the state.

General USA Nevada Texas

The OISD Board of Trustees and other local and area governing entities approved tax abatements last year after a proposal from BP Alternative Energy stated that construction on a multi-million dollar wind farm project would begin in 2010.

General Texas

With strong breezes blowing early Sunday afternoon in West Texas, wind-power generation hit a record 6,242 megawatts on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas' grid, which serves most of the state. The wind generation peaked at 12:54 p.m., representing an exceptionally high 22 percent of demand at that time.

General Texas

On the mesas of West Texas, wind turbines are now as much a part of the landscape as tumbleweeds and big skies, but they are still generally perceived as the kind of projects that require the backing of a daring entrepreneur. That might be changing. Electric utilities, which historically have been averse to investing in technologies they consider risky, are beginning to look to wind farms.

General Texas

Young County commissioners learned Monday that a proposed wind farm may be years away. ..."They're going to do it, but they're looking at two to four years down the road," Wiley said. "They put it out for bids for the electricity and got no bids. Another problem is where we're at, they can get the electricity, but they have no way to get it where it needs to be."

General Texas

Tempers flared as an obviously miffed Texas Public Utility Commission assailed a Garland city attorney Friday over a news release in which he called a court ruling reversing a commission order "a big win for Texas ratepayers." The meeting in Austin featured uncharacteristically heated and personal exchanges, coming on the heels of a Jan. 15 ruling by state District Judge Stephen Yelenosky of Austin.

General Texas

A Texas district judge has reversed an order from the state's Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to award billions of dollars in transmission projects relating to Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ), ruling that the regulatory agency should suspend the process until the PUC adequately weighs the costs and benefits to electric customers.

General Texas

T. Boone Pickens has cut his massive order for wind turbines from GE by more than half. The energy investor, who made wind power a key part of his plan to wean Americans off foreign oil, said Tuesday he will now take delivery of 300 turbines, which he will use for wind farms in Canada and Minnesota. ...He also acknowledged it's not possible to use wind exclusively for power generation.

General USA Texas

Global decentralised power generation provider, Wartsila, has won a contract to supply a 170-MW gas-fired power plant for the Antelope Station, located near Texas, USA. The power plant is to be located close to significant wind farm generation, and will serve to stabilise the grid when the output from the wind farms change unexpectedly.

General Texas

So far, talk of wind farms off South Padre Island has been just that: wind. However, giant turbines offshore may be closer to reality now that the state has awarded leases to two companies studying their feasibility along the Texas coast. One is Baryonyx Corporation, which in July signed a contract with the Texas General Land Office to lease 8,000 onshore acres in Dallam County in the Texas panhandle and 38,000 acres off South Padre Island and Mustang Island.

General Texas

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."

General USA Texas