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Oil Billionaire Building World's Largest Wind Farm
gadzook33 writes "CNN is reporting that oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens is planning to invest billions of dollars in what will probably be the world's largest wind farm. It will eventually generate 4 gigawatts, enough to power 1.3 million homes. The first 600 GE wind turbines are scheduled for delivery in 2010. Pickens says that each turbine will generate about $20,000 in income annually for the landowner who hosts it."
No, they are just leasing the space to the energy consortium. The consortium pays them money for the use of the land, and that's about it.
On a side note, every time I see Boon Pickens, I think of a Michael McKean/Norm McDonald SNL sketch where they were Vincent Price and Slim Pickens, and Norm kept saying Sliiiiiimmmm Pickens. I always think to myself Boooooooooooon Pickens in the voice that Norm was using in the sketch.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
In other news... Oil companies erect large billboards to block naturally generated windpower in an effort to negate the power generated.
Pickens made his initial big money in oil and is still heavily invested in it.
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Very good point especially since these things can literally burn and crash.
This PDF contains some scary pictures. And there is nothing you can do if the turbine catches fire. It is to high up to put it out. Don't get me wrong I like wind energy but if these things are conventionally designed each one of them will be a bush fire waiting to happen.
Just playing devils advocate as from a environmental point of view how could this be a bad thing. First off the US needs to do something like Germany and give economic incentives, ie a fixed price on energy. This way your not competing dollar for dollar with oil and coal.
Wait, so you think that developers are building these without incentives and that's a bad thing? Sadly, wind still does need incentives -- and gets it in the U.S. -- but the whole idea is for incentives to jump start the technology to where it becomes competitive without the incentives.
And these turbines, at least, aren't really gobbling land -- a lot of them get placed on ranch land, so it's essentially multi-use.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
FWIW, these two projects (the wind farm and the water system) are really the same
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
Actually, if you read the article, he said there's a "solar corridor" (whatever that means) in the States from Sweetwater, Texas to the West Coast which he thinks can be developed.
All in all, it seems like some people are trying to be realistic about this whole energy thing. Maybe. If we're lucky.
Cynical Idealist
I live close to the Waymart Wind Farm. Just a few notes:
I totally support wind energy and think the turbines have done good for the community.
They make noise. Even at 1/2 mile away, low whooshing sounds are clearly audible, especially at 4AM.
They are HUGE. Pictures don't do it justice. By the time your next to one, it's an awesome site.
The community here gets jobs and money from them. The government pays 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour for wind energy, netting the community here $150,000 a year. Also Florida Power and Electric pays about 12 employees here to service them. I've known a few that have worked on the turbines, they have some amazing pictures of being on top.
They significantly interfere with off-air television. I work for the cable company, and we had to build a giant antenna in another site because our first giant antenna was to close to the windmills. Local houses have trouble getting off-air signals, digital HD included.
They are a tourist attraction. The first few years they existed here, many people tried to sneak onto the private land to snap pictures etc..
He is probably running out of oil.. Must be it.. Need to invest in something else..
I've heard numbers like 1,500 - 1,800 foot radius being a minimum recommended spacing for this size turbine (the GE 1.65MW turbines which my utility is currently constructing 100 or so in my state). That would work out to about 162 acres per turbine. Of this, about a 30 foot circle is all that is taken out of use for the actual turbine. Disclaimer: No hard references on this, just my personal observations.
Actually, a typical new nuclear plant will have a capacity of only 1 to 1.5 GW. The catch is that it should produce that power about 90% if the time. Typical wind farms product much less than 90% of their rated capacity. The installation near me (SE USA) only produces on average 25% of its rated capacity, although I understand the project in question is in a better location. Nevertheless, no one seems to want to stand up and give the actual percentage.
A windmill is actually arguably more complex than a nuclear generator as there are a lot more (and smaller) moving parts. Note, I am speaking about the reactor core itself as it is the only "nuclear" part of the whole system. The steam turbine and other parts of the facility aren't really any more dangerous than what you have at a coal plant and are easily maintainable.
Also, while a nuke plant might "break", new core designs are *theoretically* impossible to meltdown because the reaction isn't enough to maintain itself without assistance.
This is so utterly wrong it's funny. You OBVIOUSLY don't live anywhere near California. Try driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas some time... Note the 3+ hours of driving (at 70MPH) through COMPLETELY VACANT FRICKIN' DESERT.
Land in Los Angeles county is ridiculously expensive. Land in immediately surrounding counties in the basin is fairly expensive also, but low enough that there are lots of farms, and the like, located there. As soon as you get out of the LA Basin, however (cross over the San Bernardino mountains) there are many, many thousands of square miles of utterly empty desert land...
That's why Sterling Systems/Southern California Edison is building a 7 square mile solar power facility north of Victorville. That's why there's a half dozen new state and federal prisons there, that's why there's one of the longest airport runways in the world located there. That's why Chinese airports are actually contracting to have maintenance on their jets done in Southern California. That's why BNSF railroad is building an absolutely gigantic intermodal facility there, adjacent to the airport. That's why the Army's National Training Center is located nearby, with 1000 square miles (2590 km) at Ft Irwin, not to mention NASA/JPL's North American Deep Space Network (DSN) facilities. There is an unimaginably huge amount of empty, dirt-cheap land in Southern California. Not only would dedicating hundreds of acres to wind farms be trivial... Dedicating THOUSANDS of square MILES of Southern California desert land to wind farms would go completely unnoticed by the public (the Bureau of Land Management might have a little something to say about it, though).
What's more, though, wind turbines are NOT like solar power plants. Wind turbines need as much space between them as can be practical done. In other words, you can have a few wind turbines across a farm, and continue to use the area as a farm, minus a small area that the base of the turbine takes up... It's not like the US is lacking in farm-land. In fact, most farmers LOVE wind turbines... Manufacturers just can't make them quickly enough.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
A. There were 119,117,000 housing units in the United States in 2001. Approximately 106,261,000 were occupied as regular residences and 12,855,000 were vacant or seasonal.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/ahs/ahsfaq.html
Yeah, it's just like the cell phone towers. Land owners lease an area on their property to the wireless companies. It's not their problem if the thing stops working - that's the cell carriers problem.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
The windmills at the Altamont pass are shorter and spin at a much greater velocity. The ones this guy is buying are huge, it takes a semi truck to haul in one blade. The new ones are higher up and spin much slower, and produce significantly more electricity. They are not a danger to birds.
In reading a few threads it is pretty obvious most posters have never seen a modern wind farm. SO here are some things that cut across threads:
1) Land area. What will the impact be on farmable land? Probably far less than strip mining or oil and gas. Strip mines in my part of the world are huge. And while they are operating the land can not be used and they require a huge support infrastructure. I have also seen heavily developed oil and gas fields. These too have enormous impacts on agriculture and wildlife due to the large amount of infrastructure they need (roads, compressor stations, pipelines, electrical plants etc.). Since most wind farms are far above ground they are often far less intrusive.
2) Related to the above, environmental impacts. Instead of beating a dead horse, see the point above.
3) Why can't wind power make it without huge subsidies? Why can't the free market solve the problem? Because it is not a free market. You have the Bush/Cheney energy "plan" shoveling subsidies to oil and gas companies, this distorts the market. But even if you removed the subsidies you wouldn't have a free market since a large chunk of the world's oil supply is controlled by a corrupt cartel called OPEC. When one group can manipulate supply and demand like OPEC can, free market principles cannot operate at all. It is a horrible situation, but the only way to level the the playing field for alternative energy sources is via subsidies.
Anyway, HTH.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
You don't need excuses to raise prices. Prices are already as high as they can be to maximize profits. You have a naive vision of producers as price setters merely constrained by public opinion.
\u262D = \u5350
Not forgetting buildings. Cities are known to increase temperate by two degrees centigrade for every mile radius of urban development.
National Geographic had a program which described how the latest skyscrapers in New York were being designed to save on energy by using rainwater.
Although, they were saying that every skyscraper increased the surface area of the city due to the vertical walls, but failed to mention the shadow created by the building.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
True, but which would occur more regularly in Texas?
1) Moron tosses cigarette out of truck, starts brush fire
2) Moron tries to burn something outside in high winds, starts brush fire
3) Lightning
4) Wind generator suffers unexpected, catastrophic failure and does what you see here
Sorry, I live in Colorado, and I've learned that when it comes to wildfires, always bet on morons. Lightning comes in a close second.
You can't go all wind and solar - because they are not 24/7/366.
Why can't you? We are used to not storing electricity, but places already have systems in place to store energy, whether high altitude water storage for peak-time hydro, flywheels, high-temperature sodium solar that generates electricity after sundown, or other storage methods. To say it can't be done is an incorrect oversimplification of the situation.
Learn to love Alaska
Indeed? Based on what?
It seems that figuring out what gas prices ought to be involves figuring out how much it costs, ultimately, to give you that gas. That might include:
Extraction, transport, and refining costs. However, note that the current production system is borrowing heavily against the future. For example, ultimately, extraction that does not take into account replenishment of the supply is tantamount to living off the savings in your bank account, rather than living off the interest. And no, so far biofuels are turning into a worse disaster than oil.
Furthermore, who should bear the cost of cleaning up the mess made by extraction, transportation, and burning? Who pays for the cleanup of oil spills? Who pays to repair the damage done by global warming? Who pays the healthcare costs incurred by those who are injured or killed by breathing my toxic exhaust? There is no question that while catalytic converters help enormously with some pollutants, burning hydrocarbons releases toxins and carcinogens, and the cost of making sure that those have no ill effects is a very real part of the cost of the fuel.
On top of that, it does not seem unreasonable to include a "sin tax"---cars cause enormous harm even outside their role as fossil-fuel burners. They are large, and the eternal creation of parking spots (which often cost more than the cars they serve) leads to urban sprawl, among other things. They are fast-moving and heavy, leading to many hundreds of thousands of deaths per year. They are loud---when was the last time you heard silence? A "sin tax" is not part of the true cost of fuel, but a disincentive to car use would not be unreasonable.
Of course, if you include cleanup costs in the price of gasoline, a sin tax would probably be unnecessary.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
Actually, the accident rate for cyclists on roads is about 7 times lower than that on sidewalks.
So how does the serious injury rate for cyclists on roads compare to that of automobile drivers on roads? (FYI: many places have traffic laws that forbid riding bikes on sidewalks.) And no, there is really no way a 10-mile commute on a bike can take 2 hours. Do you leave for work the minute you wake up? Even if you shower at work, it takes some time to dress and eat. The point was that for every minute longer that your commute takes you, you have to get up that many minutes earlier. Average lifetime speed of cars, city and highway, in the USA has been measured a few times, and usually found to be in the neighbourhood of 18mph. Average speed of a pathetically unhealthy lard-ass on a bike: ~10mph. My own average speed for commuting on my bike after a month: 15mph. Now (2 years later): 18mph. Yes, I tend to take more circuitous routes, and that costs me a little extra time, but not much, and it keeps me smiling. I drive 27 miles to work on the highway, which has a speed limit of 70 mph. Even if you factor the reduced speed due to the occasional construction zone, I still think my average speed is more than the best cyclist could hope to achieve. Do you suggest that the plant I work at move closer to me, or that the town I live in move closer to it? (The plant where I work is in a very rural location without much else to do there.)I even have a video of such incidents, watch this one here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3995379778782687414&hl=en and fast forward it to 7 minutes 20 seconds. I'm doing the speed limit "in the bike lane" and someone (black truck) still cut me off while both of us were going very fast. It's a good thing that bicycles can stop way better than vehicles, but still, it's just another example of no respect.
Speed can be an issue, but as a avid cyclist, respect is the real issue all cyclist encounter way more times than the speed issue.
I can't find the source but I've heard the most power the electrical grid could take from solar and wind was about %15. This has nothing to do with the capacity of these sources, but the fact that they are intermittent. Improvements in electricity storage and transport could probably change this but without real advancements the most we'll be able to get is 15%.
I stole this Sig
I live in Calgary AB, Canada, lots of us brave the snow to bike to work 'a good part of the year' at least.
Many of our office buildings have some sort of shower facilities though, that is definitely a necessity.
Fortunately Colorado was a lot more positive towards bikes.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Like any resource wind distribution is irregular; you can't just plop an industrial wind farm down anywhere.
They don't have to dump poison on your property for it to end up in your well. They can dump it on their property, where it will leach into the groundwater and from there into your well. Because water, inconveniently, doesn't stop flowing at property lines.
Things like air and groundwater can't be sliced up into pieces and parceled out to different owners. That's not some hippie ideology, it's a physical fact (unless we develop the technology to prevent air and water from crossing property lines).
So, if a capitalist dumps poison in the groundwater used by all his neighbors because he's too lazy to clean up after himself, is he not infringing their rights? Shouldn't they be able to collectively (i.e. by petitioning the government to pass laws) decide to stop him?
We all have limits. If I tried to sprint for an hour I'd end up exhausted too. But picking a pace that you can sustain should be a pretty simple skill compared to those that most slashdotters have learned.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
In most of Britain outside of London, the buses are run by private companies who make profits from the fares alone, and pay lots of tax to the government on the diesel they fuel the buses with.