Posted on 07/08/2009 10:05:03 AM PDT by Ben Mugged
The White House would be wise to learn the lessons of T. Boone Pickens' wind-power failure.
On Tuesday, Texas oilman and energy security proselyte T. Boone Pickens announced that he will delay, and likely permanently scuttle, plans for a 687 turbine wind project in the Texas panhandle.
The demise of the project, which was supposed to be the largest in the world at a rated generating capacity of 1,000 megawatts, came when Pickens discovered he couldn't raise money to build transmission lines to carry wind energy from his remote 200,000 acres to big cities that would consume the power.
Pickens had obviously hoped to become the poster child for wind. Instead, his Texas experiment is now a cautionary tale on the critical role of transmission to wind development. He's stuck with $2 billion worth of General Electric ( GE - news - people ) turbines, which he hopes to move to smaller projects throughout the Midwest and Canada. He's also decided to wait for the government to build transmission to carry wind power in Texas.
Transmission is a critical and often overlooked component to making green energy work, particularly because wind and solar resources are often located in rural areas far from major transmission backbones.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Scary when someone that smart can be fooled and defrauded by the likes of Algore and GE (and NBC), who are laughing all the way to the bank with T. Boone’s money.
It was a good idea . . . . for Pickens pocketbook if the taxpayer picked up significant portions of the cost. It was conceivable he could have made a profit doing it at this scale (he already owns the land) but he wanted to insure mega-bucks with taxpayers paying for right-of-way rights for transmission and line costs.
This is typical of the liberal, mindless influence. They NEVER consider the consequences, or real needs, for their insane, emotional, hand-waving ideas.
On top of that, the scams will continue. So will the attempts to legislate technology into existence that DOES NOT EXIST.
The greens are pointing to the huge wind projects planned in China. China’s wind projects are much larger than the Picken’s project. Many articles are touting the Chinese projects without any critical analysis about the costs and risks. I believe that the Chinese want to build large wind projects to appease the GW warming threats from the US and EU. The Chinese will say that even though they cannot adhere to CO2 limits, they are building large wind farms.
Too bad he didn’t toss some of that money to focus fusion research:
It would’ve had a much better chance at success and would’ve required much less money.
LOL, you mean that guy who was running all those commercials on TV failed?
The amazing thing is that if you took any energy engineer...and laid out all these plans...he would have identified the issues way ahead and made the Pickens project in tiny steps.
I watched an interview about two years ago with Pickens going into detail about his “vision”...and I kept thinking that he really didn’t grasp much about this whole game except that it was “the way of the future”. I remember thinking about this vision of his and wondering if he understood the various little factors in how wind energy had limits and it tended to be local.
With its resulting transmission losses, making wind and solar even less efficient.
He should have gone with nuclear instead — if he can’t get the right of way for long transmission lines, no problem; just put the plants right next to the cities that use the power.
"The federal government has to subsidize windmill production through production tax credits of about 1.8¢ per kilowatt. Wind Farms also receive an accelerated depreciation. Wind farms are also land intensive. They produce a fraction of the energy of a traditional power plant but they require 100 times the acreage.
From the National Center for Policy Analysis: to produce a 1000 megawatt power plant a wind farm would require 192,000 acres or 300 square miles. A nuclear plant would need about 1700 acres (or 2.65 mi2), and about 3 mi2 for a coal fired power plant. The transmission lines for the wind turbines would be massive, 12,000 miles just for the array."
He wasn’t fooled. More like being squeezed.
I always believed that the best way to harness wind is to build smaller units that can be attached or hung from windows in skyscrapers. No need for transmission lines.
Wind and solar both are years away from being viable, and cost competitive with oil and natural gas.
We have plenty of energy to be found off shore and in Alaska. The government won’t let the oil companies develop it.
The problem with wind is that when the wind is not blowing, no energy. If the sun is not shining, very little solar is produced. That is because we don’t have batteries to store large Watts of power.
If cap and tax passes, we will have to have 20% of our power produced by renewables by 2014. What do you think happens then when the wind stops blowing and the clouds cover the sun? 20% of the power grid will be shut down or brown out. The power company won’t cut off it’s largest customers, (businesses) they will cut off the power to your house...................till the wind starts blowing again. (think 97 degree day or 15 degree day)
That is why power companies won’t even ACCEPT more than 2% of their power from wind or solar at this time.
Reality rears its ugly head once again in the land of high-school science drop-outs.
“He wasn’t fooled. More like being squeezed.”
TBP is a major player in natural gas. He was looking for a way to convince all vehicles to run in natural gas instead of gasoline. The wind turbines were along for the ride.
I expected this to be a failure last year when Pickens was all over CNBC promoting his “plan”. Any investor could see it was doomed to fail.
Pickens tries to portray himself as some savvy oilman that has seen the “green” way. But no one reports on how he has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in this speculative gamble, that if it paid off, would enrich him many times over. This guy is nothing but a speculator, much more like a lobbyist than an oilman.
The only thing in his energy plan that makes any sense is his push to use more nat gas. That is smart given the US reserves of nat gas and the ability to actually convert cars, trucks, trains and ships to nat gas, as well as building electrical plants that run on nat gas. That is the only thing that will reduce dependence on foreign oil. Oh, and of course drilling here and drilling now!
I remember going to the Big Island of Hawaii a few years ago. Now there is one place that you would think could use wind power. I mean an island, thousands of miles in the middle of the ocean, with West-East trade winds blowing all the time. No need for expensive transmission costs.
So I wasn’t surprised when we went into the back country to visit a secluded beach and saw a windmill farm. There were dozens of Mitsubishi turbine windmills. What was surprising was that they were all rusting, not turning and broken down in disrepair.
So I asked some locals about where they get their power. The have a gas fired electrical powerplant on the island and they ship in the gas on big tankers.
So, my point is that if an island with a very small poplulation and no natural resources and a high cost to import natural resources cannot make wind power economical, where can it be economical?
Power companies already cut off their largest customers - those customers agree to be interruptable in exchange for lower rates.
Environmentalists are blocking the construction of new transmission lines in northeast South Dakota that would also carry electricity from numerous wind farms in the area.
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