The Texas wind boom ranks among America's most remarkable energy stories. As of June 30, Texas had 10,035 megawatts of wind operating and will have 11,955 megawatts by the end of 2012.
http://www.snl.com/Interactivex/article.aspx?CdId=A-15507395-10547. About 20% of all US wind power is located in the Lone Star state.
Those are phenomenal numbers and will push wind close to providing 10% of all of Texas's electricity. Ten years ago, only a few would have believed that wind could become the energy colossus it is today in Texas.
But what has happened so far looks like just a start of Texas's wind future. In the formal interconnection process is another 31,480 megawatts of wind generation. Just amazing.
By comparison to wind, in the interconnection queues are 12,399 megawatts of new gas, 3,875 megawatts of coal, and 1,189 megawatts of solar. The solar number includes utility scale projects and typically not distributed, on-site solar systems that can comprise 50% or more of total solar construction.
No doubt a substantial portion of all the proposed generation in the interconnection queue, including the wind projects, will not make it to operations. But even if about 80% of the proposed wind farms are not constructed, Texas could add another 6,000 to 8,000 megawatts of wind and hit the 20,000 megawatts mark.
In fact, that is going to happen and sooner than later.
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