USA: Largest Wind Energy project approved

With prices of oil and natural gas skyrocketing, Texas, home to some of the largest US petroleum industry conglomerates, is already planning ahead of current boom times for a future that could turn this state into one of the World’s biggest producers of alternative energy.

Following Oil Billonaire T. Boone Pickens’ declaration of “going green” and his initial purchase of about 670 MW wind turbines from GE earlier this year, regulators have now (preliminary) approved a plan to invest about USD 5 Billion into the electrical grid infrastructure connecting new alternative / wind energy projects in the wind-rich West and the Panhandle to the urban areas of Texas.

According to the approved plan the new “renewable energy superhighway” will allow the transmission of up to 18,500 MW of power from the sparsely populated areas where wind power plants are already being build to the cities where the consumers are - enough to power about 3.7 million homes on a hot summer day.

With thousands Mega-Watt of new wind energy sites in the planning, the project will - by removing the transportation bottleneck for new wind power plants in these areas - most likely put Texas, that already is the largest produces of wind power in the US, even ahead of Germany, the currently largest producer worldwide.

More information:

DailyTech on Texas changing to become the leader in US Wind Power
DailyTech on Boone Pickens’ investment into alternative energy
Houston Chronicle on the regulator decision
NY Times on the regulator decision