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nytimes.com:
T. Boone Pickens, the legendary oilman, has abandoned his plan to build the world's largest wind farm.
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Pickens did not abandon wind energy. He simply wants the U.S. to get off of importing foreign oil. He has always advocated natural gas as a go-between. He still advocates wind as a major power source.
He may also have found out that the amount of water in the Ogallala Aquifer is not in fact infinite and the aquifer recharges its water slowly and the aquifer is already under quite a bit of stress in Texas. His real plan here was to send water to the Dallas/Fort Worth area from water wells in the Panhandle of Texas, located very near his wind farms. The water pipeline was to be placed on the same land he was to have acquired as right of way for his power transmission lines . Pumping up water and sending water to D/FW was almost certainly expected to be far more profitable than any wind power generation site, regardless of size. The other reason may have been that he was not told that running electrical transmission lines in parallel with a steel pipeline will cause the pipeline to rust faster than normal. Either way, oops on his part and he just spent lots of money for no gain.
Pickens is showing his true colors. He's more interested in making more money than the environment. He wants to spend your money, not his on transmission lines. This man has no scruples.
he has never said he was "about the environment". He is simply breaking up the large field into smaller ones. Take it easy.
I think there's a place for wind in our energy supply, but I wish more attention were paid to effects on wildlife they can have. I've never seen this site address the problem of turbine towers and highly endangered ground nesting birds found in the area Pickens is targeting for wind farms.
The Lesser Prairie-chicken is a prime example.
http://newsok.com/wind-power-growth-could-put-prairie-chickens-on-endangered-list/article/3278146
"Huge power-generating wind turbines are expected to pop up all over the lesser prairie chicken's habitat in coming years, and biologists say the development could push the birds onto the endangered species list or even into extinction.
"We're very concerned they could go into a nose dive that they wouldn't recover from,” said Greg Butcher, director of bird conservation at the National Audubon Society."
Consider the fish whch are harmed by the mercury which is emitted from coal burning.
Big wind really only makes sens for off shore, where the noise, appearance, Grid buildup and flight hazard is minimal.
Rooftop solar and biochar can provide all the electricity and fuels we need, cheaper, safe and
Forever.
See my profile for proof, and links.
Rooftop solar, great! for only a few 10's of thousands of dollars, you can power your lightbulbs...
during the day.... if it's sunny out...
:)
Rooftop solar can indeed provide all the energy you NEED. It can't provide all the energy you like to waste, though.
:-)
Net metering, look it up.
16,000$ plus inverter and installation say 20k if you do a lot of the installation, will give you an average of 2kw, which is what the average family uses. I have already done the math. 120$ for financing, taxes etc per month, will replace 170$ of average 12 cent per KWH electricity per month. California and other state have peak electricity rates over 30 cents per KWH.
See my profile for links and proof.
Solar used to be expensive, I know that. It's no the cheapest electricity source, if you have the right location.
(for large commercial roofs installed. Individuals will have to install most of it themselves and pay more for about 2.5 $ per watt and about 4 cents per KWH. See my profile for details and links)
1.85 per peak watt! retail!
http://www.atensolar.com/14.html
http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm
Please adapt to the changed status of rooftop PV solar.
It amazes me what adults are capable of being sucked into believing.
Why didn't Pickens call his buddies, Alec Baldwin, Barbara Streisand and George Soros to help with the financing?
wind or no wind..., the world will be forced to change the way it operates
not because of climate change but because of depletion
there is no choice
Agreed. But WHEN will the world wake up? (hopefully before it is beyond-the-point-of-no-return)
Do people really believe that an Oil Man like Pickens would make Wind Energy affordable?
No way, he is in this for the greed of Big money and since he could not get the government to subsidize his transmission lines, he is looking at other options.
Wind Energy can provide a substantial energy supply at greatly reduced costs to consumers. The trick is to get greedy middle men like Pickens out of the picture. We need thousands of wind farms owned by thousands of smart entrepreneurs. i don't want anyone like Pickens to have a monopoly on providing electricity from wind farms, which is exactly what he wants.
Wake up people!
Do something!
well, he would not really have a monoply.
It's just business, not good or evil, windmills are not a practical way to create energy for homes or industry. If they were, I'd happily put one in my yard and save 1000's on my own energy bills.
Wind is one of the least efficient forms of energy, the appeal is 100% ideological, that's why they have never been applied successfully anywhere on the planet. You have to find a way to sell the ideology- and free markets just don't waste money on groovy concepts- unless they actually work.
Finally, a voice of logic, reason and truth. Thank you RichZ for telling the truth about the fallacy of wind power. It is something to compliment our energy grid, not something that would even come close to supplying 5% of it.
you
opinions are like *noses* everyone's got one
Wind is not effective?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Denmark
It is quite effective in Denmark and has created thousands of jobs there.
Wind power already supplies significant amounts of energy in Spain and Germany:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
and is growing rapidly in many countries.
Having said that... the T. Bone plan was all about lining Mr. Pickens' pocket's with tax payer money...
Denmark is the perfect case in point.- Ever been there?
They are way ahead of us on wind power . And now Denmark has literally the HIGHEST taxes in the world, among the highest energy bills- most severe regulations on energy use all to accommodate the ideology of alternative energy.
The pay-off for spending so much on trashing the landscape?
Denmark today is utterly dependent on importing real energy from Germany at huge cost
(especially when it's not windy out)
The whole program didn't make a dent in their own conventional power generation, or Co2 emission- if that's your thing
Jobs? Yes thousands of unproductive low skilled Govt jobs have been created to produce an unreliable dribble of energy that could be far exceeded by a small highly skilled work force operating Nuclear reactors producing energy in any weather! day or night!
a couple more green, low tech, job creating, Gov't dependent ideas you'll like.
Let's scrap all automated agriculture and get back the millions of jobs lost in ploughing, sowing and harvesting by hand
Lets ban computers and use silicon valley's money to create millions more gov't jobs building and operating abacuses.
There is a massive amount of energy in wind
And solar energy too
There’s far more energy there then the hydrocarbons we burn in a day
The problem that most people don't seem to get...,
Is that its diffuse energy
As opposed to burning hydrocarbons which is very energy dense or concentrated
Using solar and wind energy would unlikely be able to provide the same amount of energy as burning hydrocarbons
Unfortunately, because of Peak Oil and depletion in general, we will really don't have a choice
If we operated as efficiently as plants or animals in obtaining and using energy, then Peak Oil would not be a problem in a steady state economy (living on a ball)
But we are not that efficient and probably never will be
This will force us to soon learn to live with much less energy..., like most of the rest of the world
Another problem we have to face is that our infrastructure was built on cheap energy. This will lead to big problems when we end up having to rely on expensive energy
This seems at least a little more pragmatic than some of the ideology-
But it 's a Malthusian view that ignores productivity-
Since oil was first used, we obviously took the easy stuff first. So it has naturally become increasingly harder to find and extract- but also cheaper, not more expensive. If some day decades or hundreds of years from now it starts to run out, let that scarcity drive up price and drive change, no need for Gov't 'help' that just diverts power and money to itself?
"windmills are not a practical way to create energy "
so says the oilman
its good to see he hasn't dropped the idea that wind energy is the way forward, however it could be argued from the outset his original idea was to ambitious in a country that is just at a federal level waking up to climate change and sustainability.
However the the old arguements about the cost of wind energy compared to coal gas and oil is a complete red herring if you take into account the energy security and environmental costs of those technologies wind energy is really the only renewable game in town.
By far, the biggest issue in developing wind and solar generation complexes is the cost associated with developing and deploying a new transmission grid that has much lower losses than the present AC grid.
higher voltages
why is this ath the bottom of the "green" news section here,
yet headlined by MJ previous pets...?
why couldn't stim money be used. pickens put up much of his investment.
i thought thats the model obama was looking for...
public and private investment in a green future.
He wanted to put it in the Texas panhandle, but couldn't get the taxpayers to subsidise the construction of electrical transmission lines. So, he will build smaller wind farms where it is still practical. That sounds OK, and cheaper than building the wind farm where he originally wanted to.
This is another one of those cases of the media trying to generate news through a slightly tricky headline.
Whenever T Boone said it was not about the money - it was about the money. It was about getting the US taxpayers (the same ones now on the hook for $50 billion for GM - money which will never be gotten back) to subsidize all the transmission lines needed to move whatever wind electricity he generated where there were no consumers and then getting a subsidy to get the power cost down to somewhere in the neighborhood of conventional. Taxpayers can celebrate this if it is true. We may have dodged another variation on the ethanol fiasco.
and if you think electric cars are just too goofy to use, check THIS out
www.pevnet.com
my developments will consist of combination solar/wind/hydrogen fuel cell systems that the association will own and administer and excess power to be sent back out to the utilities. Sort of like 1000 home PUD co ops.
not to mention the homes are 12V operations with heat exchange heat/cooling
build super sustainable alt energy engineering marvels for the masses
thats what I'm doing
what are YOU doing?
I'm building a nuke plant in my back yard.
your "developments?" does this mean you are paving over virgin land to add more housing to a glutted market? gee, thanks? we are retrofitting existing structures in the built environment to be energy efficient, to produce clean, harmless power, and lobbying hard for generous feed in tariffs and loans. democracy that doesn't kill ecosystems.
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Posted: 07- 7-09 02:40 PM