EDF Renewable Energy, a leading power producer in the green energy
sector, has announced that its Hereford Wind Project reached commercial
operation on December 22nd, 2014. The Hereford Wind Project is a wind
power plant located on approximately 15,000 acres in Deaf Smith County
southeast of the northern panhandle town of Hereford, Texas.
The Hereford Wind Project has the capacity to generate 200 megawatts
of wind power, which is enough to power 55,000 homes. Since wind power
generation requires no fuel and is fully green, with zero emissions, it
will save about 375,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions every single
year. That's the equivalent of taking 80,000 cars off the road.
It's been a banner year for wind energy in Texas. On March 26, 2014,
turbines set a new wind power record, pumping out over ten thousand
watts of electricity, almost 30 percent of the power in use by the Texas
grid at the time. That's an impressive percentage for renewables, and
EDF's plan is to make it even higher. Tristan Grimbert, EDF's President
and CEO, says that there is another 394 megawatts in construction to add
to the 200 MW Hereford plant and another 472 MW already built. EDF is a
power player in the renewables sector, with 3.1 gigawatts of installed
capacity throughout North America, in the United States, Canada, and
Mexico. EDF specializes in wind and solar power, but has a hand in just
about everything else, from hydropower to biomass.
Most of the wind energy of Texas is currently being produced in the
rural areas of West Texas and the northern panhandle, but the largest
cities, like Dallas / Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio, are farther
south and east. So with this boom in wind power, how to ensure the
environmental riches aren't squandered when production might exceed
demand in these breezy, but less populated areas?
That's where CREZ (Competitive Renewable Energy Zones)
comes in. Spurred on by federal funding, wind power capacity in Texas
expanded rapidly from 2006 to 2009. In 2008, with congestion of the
existing transmission lines a concern, the Public Utility Commission of
Texas launched CREZ, a project to construct an additional 3,500 miles of
transmission lines, bringing the power from the more rural areas to the
places of higher demand. As a result of these additional lines having
been built, wind power curtailments, which are times that the wind power
generation has had to be reduced because of the inability of the
existing transmission lines to handle the generation capacity, have
steadily fallen since 2011. Among other benefits, this will help
further drive down electricity rates in Texas.
The $7 billion CREZ project was fully energized as of its scheduled
completion date in 2013, and it will allow up to 18,500 MW of power to
flow from the CREZ zones into the more densely-populated areas, ensuring
the continued flow of clean, green wind-generated power. EDF's Hereford
Wind Project is one of those generators, hooked into the CREZ grid to
supply power across the state.
EDF's financial partners for the Hereford project were BNY Mellon, a
leading investment bank, and MUFG Union Bank, a financial solutions
provider for environmentally- friendly energy projects. MUFG not only
helps finance renewable projects but owns interest in power-generating
facilities, as well. In addition to having built the project, EDF will
continue to manage and operate it under the aegis of its EDF Renewable
Services division, which operates and manages over nine gigawatts of
renewable energy projects in North America.
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2015/03/wind-project-adds-200-megawatts-to-texas-grid
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