I. How the CREZ lines actually got built
Pull up your CenterPoint Energy bill (CenterPoint is the wires company that delivers power across Houston, whether or not it is the name on your retail plan) and look past the kilowatt-hours to the delivery charges. A slice of that line pays for high-voltage transmission, including a set of lines that run hundreds of miles west of here. You did not vote on them directly, but you have been helping pay for them for over a decade.
Those are the CREZ lines, short for Competitive Renewable Energy Zones. The wind blows hardest in West Texas and the Panhandle, far from Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio, and the old grid had no way to move that much power east. State law set the plan in motion: Senate Bill 20, passed in 2005, told the Public Utility Commission of Texas (the state agency that regulates electric utilities) to pick the zones with the best wind and the wires to reach them. The commission designated the zones around 2008, ERCOT (the operator that runs the power system for most of Texas) studied the routes, and transmission companies including Oncor built the lines, roughly 3,600 miles of them at about 345,000 volts, finishing around 2013 and 2014.
II. The honest math on what it cost
The headline number most often cited is on the order of $7 billion, up from earlier estimates closer to $5 billion, per the commission's own reporting as the project grew. That cost was not billed to West Texas alone. It was spread across transmission charges paid by ratepayers throughout the ERCOT region, Houston included, which is why a share of it sits quietly in your delivery charges.
Per household, the effect was modest and hard to pin to the penny, on the order of a few dollars a month at last public report, folded into a transmission cost line that also pays for many other wires. Anyone who tells you the exact figure on your bill is guessing, because the charge blends dozens of projects and shifts as costs are recovered over years. The fair way to say it: real money, small monthly bite, long tail.
III. What the lines delivered
The CREZ system was sized to carry roughly 18,500 megawatts of wind, and West Texas turbines filled much of that headroom faster than many expected. Before the lines, wind farms were often ordered to shut off, called curtailment, because there was nowhere for the power to go. After the lines opened, curtailment on the ERCOT grid fell sharply, though it has never hit zero and rises again on windy nights when demand is low.
The lesson those wires are now teaching is one nobody fully planned for. The same corridors that were built for wind are now carrying a wave of West Texas solar and battery storage into the interconnection queue (the waiting line where new projects ask to plug in). Whether the CREZ backbone has room for all of it is an open question ERCOT keeps studying, and the honest answer today is that some of that capacity is already spoken for.
IV. Why other states keep citing it
The reason planners from other regions point to CREZ is the sequence: Texas built transmission ahead of the generation, on the bet that cheap power would show up to use it. Federal regulators lean on that idea too. The FERC rule known as Order 1920 (FERC is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees interstate power) pushes grid operators to plan transmission for the long term rather than one project at a time, and CREZ is the working example everyone reaches for.
It is worth being skeptical about how well the model travels. Texas could move fast partly because ERCOT sits mostly inside one state and largely outside federal jurisdiction, the commission had clear legislative authority, and one legislature could act alone. A region split across several states and two grid operators does not have those advantages, so the CREZ story is a proof of concept, not a template a reader elsewhere should expect copied cleanly.
V. Worth watching this month
1. ERCOT's regularly updated interconnection and generation reports, worth a look for how much new West Texas solar and storage is stacking up behind the same CREZ corridors, which is the number that actually matters.
2. The Public Utility Commission of Texas open-meeting agendas, routine most weeks, but the place any new transmission planning docket would surface first.
3. ERCOT's ongoing regional transmission planning updates, which will signal whether the operator thinks the existing lines need expansion, a slow process that rarely moves in a single month.
4. FERC Order 1920 compliance activity nationally, routine paperwork mostly, but the venue where the CREZ-style build-ahead approach is being written into rules for other regions.
5. Curtailment figures in ERCOT's grid reports, a quiet gauge of whether the CREZ lines are filling up again as more generation comes online west of Houston.
Questions readers ask
Do Houston ratepayers still pay for CREZ?
Yes, in the sense that CREZ costs were recovered through transmission charges spread across the ERCOT region over many years. The amount is small per household and blended into your delivery charges, so it is not broken out as a separate line you can point to.
Was CREZ built for wind or for solar too?
It was planned for wind, roughly 18,500 megawatts of it from West Texas and the Panhandle. Solar and battery storage were minor players when the lines were designed, but they now use the same corridors, which is straining capacity the original plan did not anticipate.
Did the lines actually reduce wasted wind power?
Largely, yes. Curtailment, where turbines are told to stop because the grid cannot carry their output, dropped substantially after the lines opened. It still happens on windy, low-demand nights, so the improvement is real but not total.
Why can Texas build transmission faster than other states?
ERCOT operates mostly within a single state and largely outside federal jurisdiction, and the state commission had clear legislative direction from Senate Bill 20. Regions that cross state lines or fall under federal grid operators face more approvals and more parties, so they generally move slower.
Sources of record
- Public Utility Commission of Texas, electric industry pages (state agency, .gov), The regulator that designated the CREZ zones and reported on the buildout and its cost recovery., www.puc.texas.gov/industry/electric
- ERCOT, transmission and grid information (Texas grid operator), Planning studies, transmission maps, and the operator's view of how much the CREZ corridors can carry., www.ercot.com/gridinfo/transmission
- Texas Legislature Online, Senate Bill 20 history (state, .gov), The 2005 law that directed the state to designate renewable energy zones and build transmission to reach them., capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=791&Bill=SB20
- ERCOT, generation and interconnection reports (Texas grid operator), Where a reader can track new wind, solar, and storage queued behind the West Texas lines., www.ercot.com/gridinfo/generation
- Oncor, transmission projects (transmission utility), One of the companies that built CREZ lines, with background on the high-voltage corridors., www.oncor.com
- CenterPoint Energy, Houston delivery (local wires utility), The Houston-area utility whose delivery charges include the transmission costs discussed here., www.centerpointenergy.com