Pickens scraps wind farm « Thread Started on Jul 8, 2009, 8:36am »
Pickens should think about relocating his wind farm to California where the laws promote non coal electricity generation. Although electrical transmission lines and environment issues are making alternative electrical product in the desert almost impossible.
The stagnant oil prices may have had a big part in the descision.
Oil billionaire Thomas Boone Pickens Jr. has dropped plans to build a giant wind farm in the Texas Panhandle.
Pickens, who made much of his fortune buying up oil and gas companies in the 1980s, put off the wind power project because of the difficulty of getting credit for it in the sour economy.
He’d planned a 4,000-megawatt complex that might cost as much as $10 billion, and Mesa Power, his company, has already ordered 667 wind turbines for it, though they won’t be delivered for several years.
One problem facing the huge project in Pampa, on U.S. Highway 60 northeast of Amarillo, was a lack of heavy transmission lines needed to link any wind generators to the power grid.
“The capital markets have dealt us all a setback,” said Pickens in a statement emailed to the San Francisco Business Times through his PR firm. “I am committed to 667 wind turbines and I am going to find projects for them.”
Though Pickens made his money in oil, he has worked in recent years to end this country’s dependence on foreign oil. He’s put forward plans for widespread use of natural gas vehicles, for example (though they haven’t always been well-received) as well as pushing for wind power.
Pickens said he hasn’t abandoned the project. “I expect to continue development of the Pampa project, but not at the pace that I originally expected,” he said.
The Pickens Windfarm was essentially a scam whose existence was predicated on sky high oil prices and using a ever shrinking supply of natural gas for cars of all things!
Yeah take fuel from power generators and let people fuel up their SUV's and rely on very interminttant wind power.
And worse, the power generation specs were pure bullshit. They were way out of whack of industry norms like the Tehachapi wind farm in CA.
I'm glad its dead and I hope Concentrated Solar Power follows suit, now that's environment wrecker if there ever was one.
We'd be better off strapping every Al Gore worshipper to a treadmill for power.
CNG is a very good solution if the vehicle has room to store it, like under a full size pickup or larger. It takes about five times as much space as gasoline. Just getting large trucks to use it would help.
Another thing that is hampering alternative energy like solar power in CA is that its really water intensive. Concentrated Solar Power(CSP) is a water hog that is on par with coal fired power plants. And worse they use open systems so no water recycle.
For example there is a CSP proposed for the Antelope Valley that will use 1400 acre feet of water per year. That comes out to about 460 million gallons a year!!
And in a region that is under drought conditions where we can only water our yards 3x a week.
And we're getting it all because of a bunch of slack jawed, anti-tech environmentalists want to feel good about what sort of power recharges their IPODS.
The Pickens Windfarm was essentially a scam whose existence was predicated on sky high oil prices and using a ever shrinking supply of natural gas for cars of all things!
Yeah take fuel from power generators and let people fuel up their SUV's and rely on very interminttant wind power.
And worse, the power generation specs were pure bullshit. They were way out of whack of industry norms like the Tehachapi wind farm in CA.
I'm glad its dead and I hope Concentrated Solar Power follows suit, now that's environment wrecker if there ever was one.
We'd be better off strapping every Al Gore worshipper to a treadmill for power.
CNG is a very good solution if the vehicle has room to store it, like under a full size pickup or larger. It takes about five times as much space as gasoline. Just getting large trucks to use it would help.
GB
It won't require any artificial market manipulation for CNG to compete, when the time comes it will compete with oil, everyone should stop worrying.
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