Texas’s CREZ Transmission Line: Wind Power’s $7 Billion Subsidy (ratebase socialism as ‘infrastructure improvement’)

“We see significant promise in President Trump’s plan. With 99 percent of American wind farms built in rural areas, an investment in transmission infrastructure boosts rural economies while improving resilience and reliability, delivering low cost power to consumers and strengthening U.S. energy dominance.”

– Amy Farrell, American Wind Energy Association. Quoted in Ken Silverstein, “Green Energy Is Hoping The President’s Infrastructure Plan Doesn’t Crumble.” Forbes.com, February 13, 2018.

“Regulators and wind power advocates say the build-out, approved by the PUC in 2008, has spurred huge investments in wind energy by assuring developers markets for the energy their turbines churn out.”

– Jim Malwitz, “$7 Billion Wind Power Project Nears Finish,” The Texas Tribune, October 13, 2013.

With little fanfare, Texas is just weeks away from wrapping up a nearly $7 billion effort to add vast amounts of wind power to its energy grid.

By the end of December, developers expect to flip the switch on the final electrical transmission projects built under the state’s Competitive Renewable Energy Zone, or CREZ, initiative — the years’ long effort to connect windy, largely secluded West Texas to growing cities that demand more power.

Once finished, the build-out will stretch nearly 3,600 miles and will be able to send 18,500 megawatts of wind power across the state. That’s about 50 percent more capacity than is currently installed in Texas — the country’s leader in wind energy production — and more than three times as much as any other state.

“It’s a major milestone,” said Terry Hadley, a spokesman for the Public Utility Commission. He added that regulators will be on the lookout for any needed tweaks. Those changes could include adding equipment to decrease the energy lost over the longest-stretching lines.

Texas isn’t the only state looking to add more transmission for wind power, but other projects don’t match CREZ’s scope. Projects elsewhere — particularly those that stretch across state lines — have been slowed by a patchwork of sometimes conflicting federal and state regulations. Texas has avoided the biggest bureaucratic messes because most of its power lines stay within state borders. And the presence of one grid operator — the Electric Reliability Council of Texas — in most of the state further simplifies the process.

That’s not to say planning for CREZ was a breeze. The routes, some of which proved controversial, were slowly mapped out in the PUC’s hearing room. Landowners in the Hill Country were among those who tried to prevent the lines from crossing their property. They succeeded in stopping one line and part of another after grid officials found it possible to upgrade existing infrastructure but serve the same purpose more cheaply.

The new transmission projects don’t run cheap. Texans will eventually shell out $6.8 billion to finance the entire build-out, according to a project update released this week by the PUC. Electric ratepayers will bear the burden, but few have yet seen their bills creep up. The commission has approved CREZ fees from just three transmission service companies, with other filings winding through the system.