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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..
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
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