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Pickens Plans On Wind Power
Hugh Pickens writes "T. Boone Pickens (no relation) has launched an energy plan and social-networking campaign that calls for replacing Middle Eastern oil with Midwestern wind. The Pickens Plan would exploit the country's 'wind corridor' from the Canadian border to West Texas to produce 20 percent of the country's electricity and provide an economic revival for rural America. Transmission lines would be built to transport the power where the demand is and natural gas, now used to fuel power plants, would instead be used as a transportation fuel, which burns cleaner than gasoline and is domestic. Pickens proposed that the private sector finance the investment, which would result in a one-third reduction, equal to $230 billion, in the U.S.' yearly payments to foreign countries. Pickens has already invested heavily in wind, notably a planned 4,000-megawatt wind farm in his native Texas. 'We've got to get renewable into the mix. The problem for this country is that we're paying $700 billion — you heard that — $700 billion a year,' Pickens says. 'We can't afford that. In 10 years we'll be broke if we continue that.'"
I don't think it is so much a plow to make oil look more "green," but for the oil companies to position themselves to be the ones who provide the alternative energy sources. If we switch to wind energy, they will run the turbines. If we switch to solar, they will run the solar panel farms. Why get rich off just one energy source, when you can monopolize others.
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20% wind is about right. More than that, and there are problems during periods of no wind. There's a study on wide area wind averaging (need source) which has a table of percent of installed wind capacity vs. percentage of time available. Even averaging over the entire midwestern US only gets something like 80-90% uptime.
Base load should be nuclear, since that's all fixed cost. Peak air conditioning load should be solar. In between, whatever works.
California needs a major effort to install enough solar panels to power the Southern California air conditioning load. The numbers actually work for this. The nice thing about solar is that you get the power during peak hours. You're guaranteed that bright sun and peak air conditioning load come at the same time. Wind is somewhat random on an hourly scale, and hydro is somewhat random on a seasonal scale.
The reason why the entrenched oil industry is uninterested in alternative energy is because with oil they control the supply chain. Many alternative forms of energy are difficult to control. Without this firm grip of control on the industry any investment will ultimately lead to a net loss for these powerful few and a chaotic reorganization for all others in the energy industry.
-rd
I don't think so,I just think he is going where the money is. Yes,he made his money in oil,but anyone with a brain can see that the oil money is headed out of the country like a black hole on our economy. Mr. Pickens knows that domestic production of energy will not only help out our economy,but put more cash in his pocket as well. This is the kind of capitalism we need to see more of. The man sees we have a problem and develops ways to help us out of that problem while increasing jobs domestically and making a nice profit for himself. I think it is a great idea. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Remember that many Europeans also have access to free healthcare and higher education. They also have much better public transportation systems in Europe, so they are not as dependable on gas as Americans. Also, cars in Europe are much smaller and much more fuel efficient than cars driven in America. Therefore, Americans are absolutely in trouble as the the gas prices keep rising.
Incorrect. A silver bullet is exactly what we need.
The problem at the moment (i.e. timescales of at least 10,000 years) is NOT a lack of energy sources. We've got the means to tap the water cycle, air currents, hot rocks, fissionable metals, trapped hydrocarbons, coal, extra-planetary radiation, ocean currents, angular momentum, and probably a dozen things I can't think of off the top of my head.
The problem is that nearly every time we try to exploit one of those resources, the project is stymied by bureaucratic regulators more concerned with placating NIMBYs and BANANAs than facilitating a responsible plan to supply our nation's ever-growing need for energy.
The silver bullet is not technological. It's political. We need only one thing: the will to start new energy projects. Nearly ANY new energy projects at the moment are an improvement.
Let me be the first to say, "Yes, I do want a Nuclear Power plant in my back yard. Or a wind farm. Or a solar farm. Or a deep hole. or a Dam. Or even a coal plant (I'm not real keen on the coal plant, for aesthetic reasons but if we must, we must). And turn those ugly condos that replaced the tank farm into a refinery."
Conservation is good too. It's just another angle, but it's not sufficient on it's own.
Re: motorcycle parking, you don't even need to subsidize it, just splitting some spaces to allow more motorcycle parking closer to places is probably enough. But ban "cruisers" from the spaces. No bike that weighs as much as, costs more than, and gets worse gas mileage than a jeep wrangler ought to be treated like a bike.
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That is why people should realize that renewable energies are best run independently. Solar panels on rooftops or a small wind farm can easily be paid for and operated by households or small communities and make them more independent of the energy corporations.
You forgot the most economical viable but somewhat paradoxically unpopular course of action: Get serious about efficiency and simply use less energy.