The Texas A&M Energy Institute will be exhibiting again this year (booth #802) at the 42nd Turbomachinery Symposium, September 30 - October 3, 2013. As in year's past, the event will be held at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas. 

 

The Turbomachinery Laboratory sponsors two annual symposia (the Turbomachinery Symposium and the Pump Symposium), held in the fall of each year, to promote professional development, technology transfer, peer networking, and information exchange among industry professionals.

 

These two events are led by engineers with vast experience in the petrochemical, process, chemical, utility, contractor, and consulting fields, along with manufacturers of rotating equipment and fluid-handling equipment from around the world.

 

Both symposia feature lectures, tutorials, case studies, discussion groups and short courses, as well as exhibits of the latest services and full-size equipment. These international meetings emphasize the technology and troubleshooting that users need in today's challenging workplace.

 

The Turbomachinery Symposium continues to be the only meeting organized by users for users. The members of the Advisory Committee, who provide overall guidance, are recognized leaders in the rotating equipment and power generation community.

 

More information, including registration and hotel recommendations, is available at the Symposium web site.
 

The 4th Texas Offshore Wind Energy Roundtable (TOWER) Conference was held in Houston August 27-28, 2013. John Pappas, director of the Texas A&M Wind Energy Center, was a featured speaker at the event that included Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, Candidate for Land Commissioner George P. Bush, the Deputy General Consul of the Federal Republic of Germany Clemens Kroll and CEO of Baryonyx Corporation Ian Hatton.

 

The event brought together energy leaders from the United States, Germany, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom to explore the innovations and strategies in offshore wind energy. The conference included discussion of Texas offshore wind project opportunities, Texas companies involved in wind energy projects globally, the latest information on USA offshore wind project planning and real-world experience from operational and under-construction offshore projects in northern Europe.

 

Pappas' talk centered on the DOE Offshore wind program with an overview of the seven offshore wind demonstration projects in the United States as well as an overview of Texas-specific research and market issues surrounding offshore wind. In addition, Pappas spoke of the importance of siting issues beyond evaluation of wind resource and technical suitability.

 

The Texas GoWind project has particular innovation and development needs including dealing with extreme weather loading on the turbine and platform and integrating into an energy-only market grid behind a congestion point. Pappas discussed the economic advantages of offshore wind power, such as decreased variability and the match of wind resource with power demand. He also pointed out that technology and experience was meeting with opportunity and described the concomitant increase in turbine capacity factor offshore with the ability to use higher-output turbines, thus leading to output levels and economies of scale that will make properly-sited offshore wind directly competitive with new natural gas generation and without the need for the production tax credit.

 

Pappas talked about the importance of involving the community from the start, including consideration of local economic, esthetic and market issues and tradeoffs, and of thorough evaluation of potential environmental impacts. He discussed the importance of sharing information about the permitting process and data gathering and seeking and acting on input from stakeholders. He also stressed the need to learn from offshore project experiences in Europe and the US.

 

Texas universities will gain significant new experience in offshore wind and access to the offshore wind farm for further energy and environmental research as a result of the project. According to Pappas, such access will represent a significant increase in Texas Universities' capacity on offshore wind in particular and offshore energy and environmental issues in general.

 

The TOWER Conference is hosted annually by the German American Chamber of Commerce of the Southern U.S., Inc. and the Texas Wind Energy Clearinghouse.

 

FuelFix.com

Posted on August 27, 2013 at 10:38 am by Zain Shauk in Offshore, Wind

 

Americans overwhelmingly want more wind energy, but projects that could make that happen have been mired in controversy and concern, experts said at a Houston conference on Tuesday.

 

About 76 percent of Americans want more wind energy to be added to electric grids nationwide, according to a Texas A&M study that was cited at the Texas Offshore Wind Energy Roundtable Conference in Houston's Galleria area.

 

While offshore wind projects could tap into an abundant resource of wind, the United States has been slow to add any turbines in its waters.

 

This year alone, Europe has added 6 gigawatts of offshore wind power generating capacity, said John Pappas, director of the Texas A&M Wind Energy Center. The United States has only added 20 kilowatts, a fraction of 1 percent of the European 2013 total, Pappas said. "This is all we've got," Pappas said, while showing a video of a small research project at the University of Maine.

 

Although seven U.S. offshore wind projects are currently in the development phase, with all of them receiving some funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, many of them have been halted amid concerns about funding, risks and costs, he said.

Politicians have even proposed legislation to cut funding for offshore wind research and have argued that the University of Maine project is a sham, Pappas said. Some have claimed, erroneously, that wind energy resources can cause congestion in the electric grid, in an effort to boost opposition to projects, he said. "I think we need to take care of that problem as well as taking care of the cost problem," Pappas said.

 

Cost remains the largest challenge for the advancement of offshore wind energy. Pappas estimated the costs of the seven proposed U.S. projects range from as low as $4 per watt to as high as $13 per watt. By comparison, residential solar systems can cost about $4 per watt for installations in Houston.

 

Despite slow movement in offshore wind, onshore wind energy plays a major role in Texas, the largest user of wind energy in the country.

Sep 23, 2013, 11:09 am CDT

Nicholas Sakelaris 

Staff Writer - Dallas Business Journal

 

Texas plans to add 6,000 megawatts of wind power to the electric grid in the next several years, a 58 percent increase over what blows in today.

 

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas had about 10,570 MW of wind power available as of Aug. 31, according to ERCOT and that number could jump to 11,255 by year's end.

 

Going back to 2007, the state has added more than 5,000 MW of wind power, a 120 percent increase.

 

The majority of the wind comes from West Texas, but more new projects are starting along the Texas Gulf Coast as well.

Some of the biggest projects:

• Hereford Wind with 499 MW in Castro County in the panhandle (April 2014)

• Conway Windfarm with 600 MW in Carson County in the panhandle (December 2014)

• Comanche Run Wind with 500 MW in Swisher County in the panhandle (December 2015)

Posted Sunday, Aug. 11, 2013

By Anna M. Tinsley, e-mail atinsley@star-telegram.com

 

Deep in the Texas Panhandle - in the heart of seemingly endless farmland - a new government venture is about to sprout.

 

In just days, workers will break ground on the largest federally owned wind farm in the country, geared to reduce dollars spent on energy by the millions at nearby Pantex, the nation's only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility. "We want to be good stewards ... and take advantage of the excellent wind resource we have," said John Herrera, project manager for the National Nuclear Security Administration production office at Pantex.

 

On secluded land about 17 miles northeast of Amarillo, workers are responding to the call that President Barack Obama made in June for government to develop homegrown energy and take steps to reduce carbon pollution.

 

They'll break ground Tuesday on land across the road from Pantex, which houses thousands of the most dangerous weapons ever made, on a renewable-energy project that is expected to have five 2.3 megawatt wind turbines up and running by next summer.

 

As demand for energy continues to rise, Pantex joins a growing list of companies turning to alternative energy sources, such as using wind turbines to generate electrical power. Last year alone, wind energy topped the sources of new U.S. electricity generation capacity, according to a recent Energy Department report.

 

Some Pantex critics appear to be on board with the wind farm project.

"I want them to close down the nuclear weapons facility as soon as they finish dismantling all the weapons," said state Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, a longtime critic of nuclear proliferation. "But while they are operating, I want them to use environmentally clean energy. They are doing the wrong thing, but I want them to use the right energy to do it."

 

Earlier this year, the NNSA - a U.S. Department of Energy agency that oversees nuclear weapons, nuclear proliferation and naval reactor programs - awarded a contract to Siemens Government Technologies to build and run the Pantex wind farm on about 1,500 acres.

 

The government doesn't put any taxpayer dollars out upfront to pay for the wind farm, Herrera said. Officials say payment for this facility is structured under an energy savings performance contract, which means Siemens fronts the money to pay for the system and receives $50.5 million over the next 18 years to pay for the cost of building and operating the farm as well as the financing.

 

Read more here:  

  

  

An interesting fact seemed to go unnoticed in all the press around the Electric Reliability Council of Texas's (ERCOT) Long Term System Assessment, a biennial report submitted to the Texas Legislature on "the need for increased transmission and generation capacity throughout the state of Texas." ERCOT found that if you use updated wind and solar power characteristics like cost and actual output to reflect real world conditions, rather than the previously used 2006 assumed characteristics, wind and solar are more competitive than natural gas over the next 20 years.  This might seem a bit strange since we've been told for years by renewable energy skeptics that wind and solar power can't compete with low natural gas prices. Let me back up a second and explain what's going on here, and what it means for both the energy crunch and Texas' ongoing drought.

  

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