"I can't imagine that we ship some turbines there and they don't pay us for them.
Coal is burned in specialized plants but some turbines designed for natural gas can burn oil as well.
The result is that on windy days, some turbines must shut down because there are not enough wires to transport the electricity they produce.
Even Enron built some turbines here, in one of the company's last acts before bankruptcy.In 2005, Texas was second only to California in terms of installed wind capacity, with 1,995 megawatts.
But this country's nascent wind generation industry got a bad rap in the 1980's when investments in wind generators failed because of cheap electricity from fossil and nuclear fuels and the inefficient design of some turbines.
Wind developers, for their part, are eagerly awaiting the completion of the lines, which should spur more activity in West Texas, including the area around Sweetwater, where currently some turbines must stop spinning at windy times because there are not enough wires to carry out the power.
"This isn't the icing of manufacturing some turbines, because you might get at most nine years out of that.
At its peak, the company owned about 7,000 megawatts of generating capacity, including Indian Point 2, which, with some gas turbine generators on the site, produces just over 1,000 megawatts.
Optimization is performed by operating some wind turbine at non-optimum speeds.
The use of new materials designed for strength rather than corrosion resistance is proving to be problematic for some gas turbine applications.
