The planned completion this year of $6.8 billion in "competitive renewable energy zone" transmission lines in Texas is leading wind-power developers to shift wind-project planning into high gear.
Kent Saathoff, executive advisor to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, says the build-out of some 2,300 miles of 345-kV CREZ lines will roughly double to approximately 18,000 MW—the amount of wind and other power that can be delivered from remote, sparsely populated areas in West Texas and the Texas Panhandle to population centers like Dallas/Fort Worth, San Antonio and Houston.