Pickens Drops Plan for Largest Wind Farm

N.Y. Times ^ | 07/07/2009 | Kate Galbraith

[plangent]

T. Boone Pickens’ widely advertised plan to build the world’s largest wind farm has been abandoned. T. Boone Pickens, the legendary oilman, has abandoned his plan to build the world’s largest wind farm, according to a report in The Dallas Morning News that was confirmed by a spokesman for Mr. Pickens.

The report states that Mr. Pickens will instead build a handful of smaller wind farms around the Midwest. Possible locations include Wisconsin, Oklahoma and Kansas and Texas.

The Texas Panhandle was to be the site of the original wind farm.

Mr. Pickens has said in the past that he had to delay his wind plans due to the financing difficulties that have hit wind farms across the country in the last nine months, along with a fall-off in natural gas prices.

[plangent]

Gas bag politics meets reality.

There is no feasible way to get the electricity from the wind farm to a distribution system and investors are shrinking away because traditional energy sources are too efficient.

Cap-n-Trade should fix that.

[a fool in paradise]

Shifting energy schemes doesn’t create jobs. It transfers them from one sector to another. Inefficiently.

[SAJ]

Got blown away by reality, eh, Boone?

The whole play was ependent on huge subsidies, in any case. Thought ol' Boone was smarter than that.

[norraad]

..traditional energy sources are too efficient, even more so if Sarah gets those gas pipelines she wants.

[Steamburg]

How much was it that Nancy Pelosi had invested in this scheme? Oh, bugger.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Not only are wind farms inefficient, they’re butt-ugly too.

[dead]

If he couldn’t get the taxpayers to buy it for him, he didn’t really want it all that much.

[jessduntno]

I thought he WAS the biggest wind farm???

[Valpal1]

It was a water rights and land grab curtesy of taxpayer money and government muscle via eminent domain.

The windmills were merely a beard to cover over the underlying agenda.

People caught on before he could get in rammed through.

[ebshumidors]

No, it’s in DC

[WhyisaTexasgirlinPA]

He was just on Beck supporting CapNTrade because it would put money into his pocket... screw us but the rich man gets richer.

[DoughtyOne]

If there was money to be made T. Boon would be in.

There isn't.  He isn't.

The left is going to come up against the hard cold reality now.  They have a dingbat in there that will give their dreams the support they have dreamt of.

And none of those dreams will pan out.  It's a sad tale really, a group of poeple who refused to listen to reason, will be forced to face reality.

Sadly this nation will pay a very heavy price seeing the destruction of things and processes that are sound, before the dilusional wimper off to die in oblivion.

That has been the model of how the left in this world has always conducted themselves, idiotic unsupportable blind vision, destruction, and then rebirth,
conservatives in control until the dilusional wrestle control away from them again, to take things in the wrong direction.

It's a terribly destructive cycle for the world.  One of these times, the left will screw things up so bad, the conservatives won't be able to fix it.

This appears to be a time when that may just happen.  And thus our concern.

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[Ken522]

Talking about wind-farms, I was driving along I-70 about 30 miles east of Salina and off to the north are several miles of wind turbines - I was amazed at the number! Was this something former-Senator Dole provided funding for to try to win over the enviro lobby when he ran for President (but lost)? Admittedly it's been a few years since I drove that route, but it's bigger than life ... there are literally hundreds of those things. Does anyone know the whole story? Thanks.

[rollo tomasi]

Pickens/others having trouble renting 60 Senators out? Cry me a river.

[MediaMole]

...ang they mess with weather radar.

[DTogo]

There is a feasible way to get electricity from a wind farm to the distribtuion system, it's called a transmission line. Unfortunately many windy sites are also rural sites (i.e. upper midwest) with little transmission access.

And investors aren't shrinking away because traditional energy sources are too efficient, they are shrinking away because of the overall economy and lack of capital to invest and/or inability to utilize the Production Tax Credits (not enough taxable income).

[ichabod1]

Well, you’re probably right, but it sounds like it makes sense to have more farms in more places than a big one in one place. If the wind’s not blowing somewhere, it’s bound to be blowing somewhere else.

[Future Snake Eater]

Guess he couldn’t con enough fools with his major radio/TV campaign.

[paulycy]

[truthguy]

Just like Solar, the wind is intermittent and unpredictably intermittent. It will never be more that a few percent of our energy requirements no matter what the pundits say.

Also Wind Turbines are very heavily maintenance intensive. You need a few thousand of them to equal the Output of just one Nuclear Power Plant.

The only way out of the energy mess is to go Nuclear big time.