I disagree with you on this, Charles. Let me explain why:

First, this is a just the usual deal negotiated with the light company, HL&P, whatever it is called now, actually since its creation: The Baker and Botts Law Firm.

The light company by any name is wholly a creation of the City of Houston, a monopoly that the City no longer regulates or even attempts to bargain with on behalf of the citizens or, for that matter, of the small businesses.

Second, what the light company does is (a) donate tons of money to individual office-seekers, (b) provide incumbents with untold number of other benefits unaccounted for, such as donations to this or that "charity" at the request of office-holders and (c) support not a little nepotism.

Third, and most importantly, the debt-ridden light company provides two kinds of indirect taxation to the debt-ridden City, and County, and School District, and so on ...:

One, there is a "pass-through" of inflated property-taxes and, two, an arbitrary franchise fee.

These have always been no more or less than regressive taxes and, now, with the discriminatory retail pricing of electricity, they are simply monopoly rent-sharing.

That is precisely (1) the very opposite of what the City of Houston, for instance Governor HOGG, stood for, (2) profoundly subversive of our economy, and, curiously, (3)exactly how the Soviet Union was financed.

The GOP loves this and the clueless or corrupt Democrats simply have no clue what else to do.

The Soviet Union was not a model of environmental sensitivity or technological progress. There was sort of a cult of both among communist intellectuals, but the reality of the Soviet Union was otherwise.

Which brings us to "Wind Power".

The statewide grid-monopoly, ERCOT, promised 10% "wind power" in exchange for the sweetheart deal it got from the Lege. No surprise there, it could have been a handful of magic beans, the Lege loves the public utilities for the same reason City Council does, even more so, inasmuch as City Council and the Mayor actually have decent salaries.

So, Houston's 30% is probably most of the statewide 10%quota.

But, what does this sort of Stalinist quota-fulfillment amount to, really?

The "wind-farms" on the statewide grid are complex, turn-key, package-deals, probably related to arms-barter or Boeing exports.

They feature horizontal axis wind-turbines designed for the North Sea and wildly unsuitable for the near-tropic, where we live.

But, no matter! The wind-farm deals raise the average cost of wholesale power purchased, hence, the monopoly (discriminatory) price of power sold in Texas at retail.

So, "net, net, net", that is a trivial amount of actual power delivered to a windo air-conditioner in Houston providing monopoly revenue for a ton of new coal-fired and nuclear plants as well as extending the life of old plants -- all of them profoundly obsolete.

Our generation plant here in Texas is largely "dumped" here from the EU and Japan, where obsolete technology cannot be sold. Bought or bartered cheap, "offshore", it is marked-up and put on the "rate-base" here.

Remember, this is all inancially, not mechanically "engineered".

So, if you love those giant 1920's Soviet Dynamos, NKVD/KGB "hard currency", crypto-capitalist deals, Sikorski bombers with lots of wings and motors, Stalinist Steel Mills and other techno-aesthetic monstrosities, you will love Glorious Texas Wind Farms -- well air-brush renderings of them -- and not notice the unreliability and poor maintenance of them, the absurdly high retail price of energy in Texas, the poor people dying of heat prostration, or the lovely, albeit heavily guarded, gated communities and Hill Country dachas of utility executives, their political proteges, and the rest of our nomenklature of crony capitalists and simply corrupt politicians.

But, Charles, keep up the love, maybe the light company will put you on the list -- the nomenklature.