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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."
In other news... Oil companies erect large billboards to block naturally generated windpower in an effort to negate the power generated.
In all seriousness, I really hope this works out, as any effort to lessen our carbon footprint is a good move in the right direction.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
That's only 3.3 time machines worth of power.
Sim City taught me that cold fusion is the way to go.
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.
Please don't bring up "what about the birds?" in regards to wind turbines. Just don't. Sure, some may fly into one and die. Some won't. It's called survival of the fittest. Eventually, evolution will program birds so they will know "wind turbine ahead = death". The ones that don't pick up on it will be dead, and thus not to worry about.
You see, if air pollution from oil/coal/whatever happens, that affects the birds too, dumb and smart.
And this is why the guy is a billionaire.
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
Pickens is on record as saying that Peak Oil is not only real it's now. As one of the last wildcatters it's not wise to bet against him. Then again he really likes Oklahoma State football so he's not right about everything.
FWIW, these two projects (the wind farm and the water system) are really the same
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
I am all for renewable energy, but I disagree with the idea of economic incentives. There have been a large number of potential renewable energy sources, and many people seem to have one that is their favorate. None of these (except hydroelectricity) have become major sources of power, due to various obstacles that still must be overcome. I think that once these ideas are economically feasable (*if* they are feasable) they will get investment and be implemented.
Incentives and subsidies rush products that are not yet ready into the market because they are made artificially cheaper. The problem is, instead of using whatever technology can profitably produce energy, we end up using whatever technology is the favorate of the most people, or the pet project of a particular legislator or lobbying industry (corn ethanol, I'm looking at you).
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..
There was actually a car on fire in the parking lot this morning. Just sitting there, parked.
Those things can literally crash and burn too.
Totally off topic but it was the most exciting thing to happen at work in forever.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
> when oil billionaires are getting out of the business
Not exactly. Oil billionaries can't drill for oil anymore in the first or second world so they are looking at new sources. Drilling for some terrorist despot in a third world hellhole and hoping the regime lasts long enough to pay you the percentage they promised before the next revolution nationalizes the fields isn't all that enticing.
Owning windmills in Texas is a solid moneymaking proposition now and since Texas isn't likely to experience a revolution anytime soon and seize your assets long term investing makes sense.
Democrat delenda est
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
If we accept that the actions of human beings can impact the climate, and we accept the first law of thermodynamics, what impact will wind farms have on the environment? Imagine if every home and factory in the U.S. were powered by wind farms. How much energy would these farms be pulling out of the wind? How would that impact weather patterns? Something I've always wondered about. As we jump off fossil fuels and move on to other sources of energy I sure hope someone thinks ahead this time.
Be Safe! Sleep with a Marine. Semper Fi!
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Well with a little initiative on your part, exciting things like that could happen in your parking lot every day.
I'm just sayin'.
The enemies of Democracy are
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
Apparently the combination of tall buildings, glass, and bright light is pretty deadly for birds. The bright lights on the tall buildings (like those over 40 stories) can really confuse the birds when they are migrating. The birds are used to using visual cues from the stars and moon to navigate, and according to the article can end up crashing into the building at night since they are attracted by the light, or get confused into circling the building until they are exhausted. Then in the morning, when they try to leave the city, the glass of the building reflects the sky and the birds fly into the glass.
Most of the birds are small songbirds, which are easily swept up by custodial staff, and it happens at many buildings, so it's not so noticeable for pedestrians, but it's a big enough problem that the buildings (according to the article) have started dimming their lights to avoid killing more birds.
So if you want to argue against windmills on the bird issue, then you should be prepared to argue against skyscrapers as well.
The largest nuclear power plant in the united states is Palo Verde which provides a maximum of 3.8GW.
The largest plant in the world is the
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Japan which has a peak theoretical output of 8.2GW, but is currently offline because of damage caused by an earthquake.
So 4GW of power would be significant.
We have the best government that money can buy.
Most of the "socialist" things that western governments do are profitable for private business.
- Public schools and cheap/free higher education, if properly used, increase the educated work force and allow for greater productivity and profit.
- Public health care, if properly used, increases the overall health and productive lifespan of the population allowing for more productivity and greater profit.
- Public transport reduces the wear and tear on roads, decreases the consumption of oil(and therefor both the environmental impact and the actual cost of petrol), provides cleaner air(see benefits of public health care), reduces traffic congestion and therefor commute time, requirements for businesses to build parking structures, cost of expansion of roads, and a number of other things.
These sorts of things benefit everyone, including businesses, however no one wants to pay for them because that would involve a reduction in "my" money.The same thing goes for the long term costs of things. A CEO is interested in increasing his or her own personal wealth above all other things(that's how capitalism works), but the system has been put in place such that the only thing that matters to his or her own personal wealth is the short term results of his or her actions combined with luck. Any CEO with half a brain will trade a profit today resulting in a massive loss 5 years down the road for a small loss today resulting in a massive profit 5 years down the road.
This means that things like environmental pollution, outsourcing, and other forms of exploitation are rewarded for their short term benefits as opposed to punished for their long term consequences.
The problem with all of this is that in order to force companies to recognize long term costs and to organize the creation of and management of services which in and of themselves may never be profitable but which reduce costs and increase profits over the whole of society, we need a government, because populist and short sighted though they may be they're still better than private enterprise at certain things.
The phenomenon you're talking about is called the Tragedy of the Commons and it's been around since long before capitalism became the dominant economic model.
The problem arises whenever an action causes a short-term benefit to an individual, but a long term cost to a group. Since the individual is part of the group, he is faced with two choices:
That's a pretty easy decision to make, and we haven't (yet) found a way a getting around the problem without trampling all over people's rights.
It's particularly tricky when the cost is very long-term. As a previous poster mentioned, the reduction in wind energy resulting from wind farms will (given enough farms and enough time) have a substantial effect on the climate. But the long run cost of any individual wind farm is impossible to calculate, since there are so many unknown variables, and probably so small as to be negligible anyway. So how do we go about assigning blame and collecting compensation fairly?
A parting thought: If, 150 years ago, you had asked an average person what they thought the top environmental problem of the future would be, they'd have talked about dealing with horse manure. It's not because of government intervention that we don't walk knee deep in horsesh*t today.
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