ERCOT’s System Planning Group under Bill Bojorquez has taken the first step in the process to assess wind generation potential throughout Texas for designation of renewable energy zones. 

Texas Senate Bill 20, signed into law August 2005, requires the Public Utility Commission to designate Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZs) and develop transmission plans to deliver the power from these zones to customers.   ERCOT is working with the PUC to develop the transmission plans and other information necessary for the PUC to make this determination.

The first step was gathering input from wind generation developers and other stakeholders to identify the counties which they believed merited consideration for wind development.  System Planning is now inviting proposals from qualified consultants to assist in the analysis of the potential counties identified by the stakeholders.  ERCOT will work with the selected wind consultant to define the potential CREZs based on consistency of wind patterns, sufficiency of wind generation potential, inclusiveness of most areas from stakeholder input, and similarity of transmission interconnection.  The resulting definitions will be posted for stakeholder comment and issue resolution before the wind consultant proceeds with developing representative wind power output profiles for each potential CREZ. 

A map illustrating the aggregated input received from the stakeholders on counties to be considered for inclusion in competitive renewable energy zones has been posted under the Long Term System Study folder on the Operations and Planning page of the ERCOT Web site:

http://oldercot.ercot.com/tmaps/login.cfm