Dec 20 - McClatchy-Tribune Business News Formerly Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - Meena Thiruvengadam San Antonio Express-News

New wind turbines under construction in West Texas could power the homes of up to 70,000 CPS Energy customers, the utility said this week.

The 181 turbines are expected to begin supplying power to CPS Energy by late spring.

"It's a win-win when the wind blows," CPS Energy spokeswoman Theresa Brown Cortez said Tuesday.

Wind energy, often coupled with traditional power sources for those non-windy days, is a form of solar energy created by the Earth's circulation patterns and has been used for thousands of years.

It can produce electricity when air flows to the rotor of a wind turbine, spinning it and driving the shaft of an electric generator.

"Wind energy is a source of electricity whose price doesn't change with the price of fuel," said Christine Real de Azua, assistant director of communications for the American Wind Energy Association.

By subscribing to CPS Energy's Windtricity program, customers buy $3 blocks of wind energy, enough to cover 10 percent of the energy used in the average home in a month.

On the Web American Wind Energy Association Windtricity.com

Last year, CPS Energy began receiving power from 67 wind turbines erected last year at the Cottonwood Creek Wind Farm southwest of Sweetwater. The utility also buys all the electricity generated at the Desert Sky Wind Farm, also in West Texas.

"We are looking at any and all possibilities for generating power, and renewable is very important to us," Brown Cortez said.

When the new turbines being built at Cottonwood Creek are completed, CPS Energy will be able to generate enough wind energy to power more than 140,000 homes.

Earlier this year, the American Wind Energy Association announced Texas had surpassed California as the country's top wind energy producer. California had held the title for 25 years.

Wind energy provides less than 1 percent of the nation's power, Real de Azua said.