Texas has 25 percent of all US wind energy production

Fuel Fix:

Wind turbine construction in the United States has rebounded to its highest level in three years,according to a report Tuesday by the American Wind Energy Association.

More than 8,500 megawatts of wind power capacity was built last year, almost double the 2014 tally. More than 3,600 megawatts of that construction was in Texas, which now counts almost a quarter of the country’s wind energy supply.

Michael Goggin, senior director of research at AWEA, attributed the sudden rise in construction to uncertainty in 2014 around the future of a federal tax credit for renewable energy projects, which had been set to expire at the end of that year before a late-hour extension by Congress.

“A lot of projects began in 2014 to secure the tax credit,” he said. “Those projects were being completed in 2015. It doesn’t take a tremendous amount of time to build a wind farm.”

The amount of wind energy within the United States has grown more than six-fold over the last decade, but it has not always been steady. In 2013 less than 1,100 megawatts were built – down from a peak of more than 13,000 megawatts the previous year – as developers feared the political winds in Washington were turning against them.
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At some point energy providers are going to have to stand on their own and not be just a tax play.  Texas has a goodly supply of wind in several areas of the state from the Gulf Coast to the Panhandle.  It also has already made the infrastructure investment to get the energy produced to market.  That gives it an advantage over most other states.   Texas also has an abundant supply of natural gas to make up for the wind shortfalls.