Texas wind energy firms need more technicians. Can they drum up student interest without state support? [Video]

Subscribe to The Y’all — a weekly dispatch about the people, places and policies defining Texas, produced by Texas Tribune journalists living in communities across the state.

SWEETWATER — Sitting in the football stadium bleachers of his West Texas high school, Steven Vasquez used to look past the flatlands and watch the wind turbines spin. Even after kickoff, he would stay entranced by the red lights atop the turbines, blinking like a heartbeat.

“I was always fascinated about how they generate so much electricity just by the power of the wind,” Vasquez said. “And then I found out that I can study them even more, I can really see how they’re built and how everything works on the inside.”

The ever-present sight of turbines near his school became the infancy of Vasquez’s dream to work in the wind energy industry. He graduated from a small public high school in Sterling City, where wind companies …