Oh sure, Rock Port, Missouri managed to snag the title of being "
100% wind powered," but Texas' new plan will make the Show Me state's gusty initiatives look awfully weak. Officials at the Public Utility Commission recently okayed a plan to "build billions of dollars worth of new transmission lines to bring pollution-free energy from West Texas to urban areas." The ginormous Lone Star state is
already the nation's leader in wind power, but when said plan is fully implemented (pending final approval), it'll produce more wind energy than the next closest 14 states combined. Granted, customers will be paying a touch more ($4 per month is the current estimate) for all this clean energy, but pundits assert that the cost is minor when looking at just how much this will help out Mother Earth. Look for everything to go live in four to five years, barring any unforeseen setbacks.
[Thanks, Adam]
posted July 18th 2008 6:16AM
Dan L (and others who keep bringing up oil):
This has nothing to do with oil or the Middle East or gas prices. Do you realize this stuff the electricity that goes to homes/businesses? We don't get that from oil (it was at 1.5% of total power production in 2006 and falling)!
I have to agree and it maybe unpopular but I grew us in NYC and I have a house in the Penn. County, there is a difference in air quality but its really not that bad. I went to Asia for 6 months last year and if you want to see air pollution look at Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh City. People in the country complain about pollution and i don't think most of them know what it is. I could be being tricked by the commercial but to my understanding coal is pretty clean. In fact i am pretty sure thee is a coal plant not to fair from here and you wouldn't know. Al this wind power stuff is cute until it starts costing more than what we have. Essentially, what they are staying is even with the increase in the cost of oil and the doubling of the cost of NG this will still cost more per month. You call it the power lines or whatever you want but thats still BS. If we are building these plants to "stop giving terrorist money" rather than fight for some liberal environmentalist BS then we should build nuclear plants. They emit no pollution and generate a lot more and more stable power and they are not such blight because its one plant instead of 1000s of windmills hence they take up less space too. I don't blame Mr. Pickens for trying but this is clearly a load of crap if its going to cost more to get power for a free source than it would to get power from a source we import from generally hostile countries at a high premium or that we have plenty of in your own country. I wish they would give the environmentalists their own wonderland island so they can all be happy in a bio dome somewhere and raise taxes and whatever else and not bother other people who just want to live regular lives not destroy the planet but still be able to enjoy it .
This coupled with conservation can make a tiny dent. More good ideas over at http://www.energyefficientnation.org/
Oklahoma is the obvious sweet spot for wind power because Kansas sucks and Texas blows.
Note to self: fly higher
- Pete the Talking Parrot
One month of the iraq war could pay for this with coin to spare.
AMEN!!!
I live in Amarillo and for years I have wondered why we have not been a major source of wind power. I IS ALWAYS ANNOYINGLY WINDY HERE. It is about time.
So what do you propose? Should we power a factory, a town of 50,000 and ramp up to meet rising demand with your allmighty knowledge of high school physics?
So, why is Wind more costly than say, oh, burning something that we had to dig out of the ground?
1) Texas is spending $1.8 BILLION on a 500 MW wind farm. That's a ton of money for a smallish power plant.
2) 500 MW is the RATED capacity, not an average. That's what it would produce if all of the wind turbines are rotating at their optimum speed.
3) Wind is variable
4) Wind turbines are very inefficient at capturing wind energy (coal & naturalgas are much more efficient, and nuclear blows them all away)
5) We are flat-out LOADED with coal and natural gas in this country. It's dirt cheap because it's over-abundant.
less efficient.
Mike, you do realize that we're using alternative resources to create electricity becuse they're less polluting, right? This has very little to do with saving money, at least for now. 50 years from now, who knows? By then the world will have pretty much ran out oil. Natural gas is definitely cleaner than oil and coal, but we don't have an unlimited supply. If we simply move from oil to natural gas to power our cars and heat our homes, we'll run out of natural gas soon enough.
True, but cost of fuel = 0. The initial investment per watt may be loads above a standard plant (coal for example), but after you build it, it's only the maintenance fees that will get you. I think they are front-loading all of the startup costs because of the uncertainty of it not being the best technology in the near (10 year) future.
"True, but cost of fuel = 0."
Really. We import fuel from the middle east, canada, etc for free?
Diamonds and gold are free also, I'm gonna head down to the jewerly store and claim mine.
Nastro, where is your logical, critical thinking? I see no cost benefit analysis from your post. Where's your physics? Hey, I just spotted some BS!
While this is great this is partly a scheme to pump water into Dallas. Which will have very negative environmental effects.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_25/b4089040017753.htm?chan=search
In other news:
Texas has approved the installation of Diesel Powered Fan Farms to blow into the Wind Generation farms...
Last time I drove threw west Texas the landscape was nothing but wind turbines. It looks cool but the "wild west" landscape now looks like some sort of terraforming project on Planet Z.
Wind power was here long before coal, gas and oil, and in the long run, it may be the answer to small scale power generation.
I was raised in Florida on a ranch that pumped water and generated electricity with wind power.
I grew up in a North Carolina community that, at one time in the 70s, was completely powered by a huge wind generator atop a mountain. (Remember the Whooshies!)
My home at the coast is at this moment pumping water for my crops with an old Chicago windmill. It is clean and green. No birds have been harmed. They perch on the lightning rod above, and the tower below. (They have avoidance 'radar', so do not fly through the moving vanes.)
My belief is that wind power is not solely for rural applications but can and should be a supplement to suburban sites. A small wind generator such as mine needs only an average of an 8mph breeze to generate enough electricity to run several circuits with lights, fans and computers.
I even use a small wind generator on the fishing vessel. You would be surprised at what you can do for (almost) free with vanes, cables, storage cells, and a little knowledge.
@Mike
Wow, dude....you can do the math, but you're not thinking with the kinda perspective that matters. Boone Pickens is NOT an idiot; you don't become a billionaire by being stupid.....ok I take that back, Mark Cuban didn't deserve his money. lol jk
Listen to the reason Pickens is pushing this so hard!
I urge EVERYONE to watch this video:
http://www.pickensplan.com/
Now the only issue I have with his plan is that our representatives are too much in the pocket of lobbyists to get this done, but essentially he's right.
What it comes down to is this: wind is NOT an answer to our prayers, but it IS a solution to help us transition. The point is not to use natural gas to replace crude oil, but only to help until we have perfected hydrogen fuel cells and other technologies.
Furthermore, I work for a power company that has coal and NG plants....AND it's about to build a very large wind plant.
Fact:
Wind can NOT be your only source of energy. In fact, it must account for less than 10% of your total energy production. If you try to do more, your customers are going to be extremely unhappy. All of those towns that are "100%" wind-powered are misleading....they get supplemental energy when demand is up and wind is down. You must have a steady source. Wind can only be a supplement. I am ALL FOR building nuclear plants. It has the best of all aspects. Only problem: takes 10-12 years to build a plant.
I'm laughing my ass off at all the idiots here that keep referring back to oil, gasoline, fuel cells, etc. How did this become a discussion over automobile fuel???? The two are NOT RELATED!!!!!
Wind won't replace oil in any way, shape, or form. Wind won't power your car.
Transitioning with wind doesn't make sense to anyone that knows how power works. It's only a supplement, and a small one at that.
Reason it's so expensive even though the fuel is free? Because the equipment is outrageously expensive. Because you can't put a wind farm near the major cities that use the power (wind farms must be put where the wind is) so you have to build hundreds of miles of transmission line (a very expensive thing to do). Because you still have to perform maintenance on thousands upon thousands of spinning turbines (moving parts = maintenance nightmare, especially when they're 100 ft+ in the air). Because those turbines are very inneficient, so the power they produce isn't very much compared to initial cost. Because those transmission lines introduce heavy losses on top of the low efficiency of the turbines, due to their length.
Oh, and T. Boone is an idiot. I get to see plenty of him in the news around here. Owning land that has oil when a major oil boom is just starting does not make you smart. It makes you lucky. He's a billionaire, but he didn't get that money through intelligence.
Wind is really a waste of time and especially money. If this were the real deal (like fusion) I'd be advocating spending as much as we can afford to get it up and running ASAP. Unfortunately, wind is not the answer, and fusion isn't ready yet.
Pollution: I was referring to the fact that these farms take up hundreds upon hudreds of acres. Drive around Cali and you'll see what I mean. Their once-beautiful mountains look like shit now. This is the crap that environmentalists won't let us do to Alaska to get billions of barrels of oil, even though very very few people live there, and the pipelines don't take up that much space (I've seen the one there....it's not that bad, and the animals like it due to it's slight warmth). However, they don't care when the entire horizon is dotted with windmills in areas where people actually live.
@ Mike:
"Wind won't power your car."
Wind power creates electricity.
We have electric cars.
...
"In fact, it must account for less than 10% of your total energy production."
It's a fact that wind power must be less than 10%? Where did you pull this number from, everybody know it less than 68.242542%.
Someone please help me here... If the equipment is already bought with tax payer's hard earned money and the wind is "free" why is it everyone is paying a $4 premium extra a month to go green? Assuming that okay the start up costs are expensive now after the initial investment but in the long run it will be more cost effective..... does any1 really think they will lower the electric bills in the future? Now Im all for green renewable forms of energy but im having a hard time following all this funny math.
If you want some research and facts why don't you read this paper
http://www.aweo.org/ProblemWithWind.html
The truth of the matter is that Wind Farms cannot significantly increase or even support a real power grid on its own or without approximately 80% power back up (THATS BEING VERY GENEROUS, and not even starting to account for the growth of future power needs based on population inceases in the US) So we still need coal which by the way is starting to be very clean and reasonable.
Oh by the way...you know how your teachers taught you that oil is a fossil fuel and that it will run out...turns out they were teaching a hypothesis that has been disprooved over and over and over! Turns out oil is a RENEWABLE RESOURCE and will be produced by the earth until the earth is no more.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3952
Rock Port, MI is actually 140% wind powered (they give back electricity since they don't use it all)
As I read this I am listening to NPR talking about the US Congress still NOT renewing the tax credits for non fossil fuel power plants. Stupid, oil industry bought bastards.
How are people going to have to pay extra for energy generated for free or pay extra for oil. I understand there is a cost to building the think ok fine but who really thinks with the 30+ million people in Tx paying $48 a year each for a few year this won't be paid off in a few years? When they then take away the extra cost NO. My theory of the cabal between the environmentalist and big business continues. They need to be stopped or they will F- us all in the a$$. Thext this we will see is bottled air wait they sell that already....
Wow, what a great, unbiased source of information!
aweo.org - Industrial Wind Energy Opposition:
Resources for debunking claims, documenting ill effects, and fighting the spread of industrial wind power.
hmm, that acronym doesn't make sense - wonder why they're using it? Could it be because it's almost identical to this:
awea.org - American Wind Energy Association
Mike is pretty well right on all counts...
Burning coal is very clean, and if you think otherwise it's because you're a patsy and fell into fear mongering propaganda. It's carbon, you scrub the trace elements out.
It seems if someone opposed so called "green" projects they get ostracized to hell. Most people don't even understand the principles behind these projects about and then wonder why they can't put a wind turbine on top of their electric car to get a perpetual motion car. If the mob says it's good, it must be!
They should paint coal plants green, then call them "green power plants".
"You can never win. You can never break even."- yours truly, Entropy
I really don’t get why everyone fights about this stuff. There is no one solutions it’s not coal, wind, and sun or nuclear it’s all of them combined.
Where its economically sensible say Arizona you might want to lean toward solar or say West Virginia lean toward coal. Also I think it would be smart of this country to go to a distributed power generation. What I mean buy this is to have new buildings help produce some of their own power by putting solar cells on their roofs or in the windows. MIT just developed a way to put a solar cell in a piece of glass and it still be transparent. In a large office building it could make some good economic sense (free power) and not change the way the building looks. Also you could look at this from a military strategy stand point. With buildings able to generate their own power it makes it a lot harder to cripple a city from taking out a power plant. Heck our interstate highways were never built just to help people get from point A to point B. They where built for the military to get troops a cross the country fast.
True on all counts, but the problem is these people (like T. Boone) are pushing a total conversion, not just distributed power production. He wants to line the entire central plains with wind farms. WTF?
I agree wind mills are especially nice on tall buildings while solar panels make sense on other buildings, but they are atm still too expensive. Hopefully that will change eventually (will soon for solar panels), but I really don't think it will for wind mills....not to the point that a corporation would spend the cash to put one on their building.
Wind farms, however, are a fad that we will one day regret. And we could be putting that money to much greater use.
Reminder to all: THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH OIL! STOP ARGUING THAT IT WILL REDUCE OUR DEPENDENCE BECAUSE IT DOES NOTHING TO HELP THAT PROBLEM!
Several billion dollars for new transmission lines is going to cost a h*** of a lot more than $4/month.
Capacity factor is better for wind than solar photovoltaic, but doesn't come close to traditional base load generation like coal (boo) or nuclear.
If this can substitute for natural gas, per the Pickens plan, great, assuming I can use that for my vehicle (converting my car *and* retrofitting the local gas station to supply CNG costs $$$ as well)
Just understand the cost to add significantly more transmission capacity *and* to switch to smaller capacity, lower availablity generation sources like wind is going to cost much more than a few bucks per month.
In the absence of California-sized subsidies, renewable costs much more.
Not so. The cost of the lines is estimated at $4/month per household (beginning in around 2014) and is likely to be outweighed by the savings when wind-generated electricity displaces power from natural gas. I'll see if I can rustle up the total savings numbers.
Regards,
Thomas O. Gray
American Wind Energy Association
www.powerofwind.org
www.awea.org
www.20percentwind.org
"...blow other states away."
WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!