Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
What about upright wind tunnels? They build a big structure a mile tall with plastic tarps 10ft above the surface for a few miles radius.
Air warms up under the tarp and goes up the tunnel. Estimates put power at around 500 MW. It was a project around Australia somewhere but it was cut to 1/2 mile for some reason (I dont know).
It could *EASILY* turn out that Pickens is just another participant in the public relations campaign that big oil is putting on to convince Americans that big oil isn't out to get them.
People are angry at the pump, and the more people who identify oil companies as enemies, the more people are exploring alternative fuels.
While his emphasis on America's trade deficit and, apparently, the economy seems to be a new tune for an oil man, he has plenty of others with whom to share the oil-going-green spotlight with.
Good to see someone up top speaking out for a change. I don't understand why more dont follow suit.... If you're a rich billionaire oil tycoon, you could invest in windpower and become a rich billionaire wind tycoon...There's no need to be so hell bent on oil
In 10 years we'll be broke if we continue that.
There are some that would argue that the US is already broke. The creditors just hadn't started calling yet. But they are now. Take a look at the S&P 500 over the past couple months, then zoom out and compare it to 2001. Yes, friend, right here is the abyss. Not later - right now. 1250 is where it stopped a few months ago. 1250ish is where we are now. After that it's 800 and we're back to the low point of the dot-com crash, and after that there's only the floor. It goes all the way down.
No, America doesn't have 10 years. Oil is going to break America long before that. Europeans are paying $9 US or more per gallon of gas and although they don't like it, they manage. What happens to the US economy when gas doubles again? You're having trouble at $4/gallon.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It's really simple. Build windmill farms. Build solar collecting power plants. Build the variety of hydro electric generators.
Run everything from electricity including water heaters, building heaters, and cars.
Stop sending money to the other side of the world.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/12/doe_study_offpe.html
Someone, somewhere, will claim that this does not help solve the gasoline problem. Please read the above link, which states that current off-peak electricity could power nearly 200 million PHEVs, according to the DOE. Adding green energy sources will greatly reduce pollution in urban areas when combined with ultra low or zero emission transit.
We'd still have somewhat of an oil problem, but commuting can be covered by existing electric infrastructure.
His point is to use wind to replace natural gas power plants, then use natural gas to fuel our vehicles.
The Gish Bar Times - Blog covering Jupiter's moon Io
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.
Mr Pickens, with a national debt of about 30K per head, an imploding housing market, a possible depression and soaring exchange rates to other currencies, weren't you like, broke, 5 years ago ?
This is NOT a signature.
Fine, don't RTFA. And apparently, you didn't read the /. summary, either
The intention is to use wind power to free up supply of domestic natural gas for transport (that's automobiles).
22% of US electric demand is supplied by natural gas fired power plants.
[Gene]
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
Generating electricity isn't that difficult. Generating enough electricity to keep an average american home electric-bill free is. I started looking into solar and found it was too expensive for too little of a return. Maybe a few years down the road it will be better.
I'm sure a lot of people have done the same, and I'm sure a lot of people have also taken the next step as well and started looking into less expensive ways to generate energy. It seems odd, but very little attention has been paid to the home-electricity arena and there are huge opportunities for engineers and innovators. Building a radial flux generator is well within the capabilities of most do-it-your-selfers for less then a few hundred dollars and the only problem is how to turn it.
Should it really have taken until 2007 before flutter belts came along? Is it really that hard to engineer a device that would take advantage of rooftop wind energy? I bet some products hit the market soon and some DIY projects start showing up online as well.
But wind energy isn't the only thing out there. PV isn't the only way to extract energy from the sun. Gravity can be harnessed pretty easily. And there are plenty of other sources as well.
If there's one good thing to come out of the gas price situation we are dealing with, it's that a lot of smart people will be looking at energy generation all over again.
> Pickens is putting his money where his mouth is and at the same time
> helping America, that is a true Capitalist and a Patriot.
Sounded like that when I first heard of this... but I actually dig a little before jumping into supporting something. Check his WSJ piece of July 8 and these two quotes from adjacent paragraphs no less:
Quote #1
"It will be accomplished solely through private investment with no new consumer or corporate taxes or government regulation."
Quote #2
"The future begins as soon as Congress and the president act. The government must mandate the formation of wind and solar transmission corridors, and renew the subsidies for economic and alternative energy development in areas where the wind and sun are abundant."
Eh? Sounds like another corporate welfare client trying to get his grubby hands into my pocket.
If wind were really economical he wouldn't need subsidies and wouldn't be waiting on Congress to quit masturbating and do something.
News flash: Democrats LOVE these high gas prices, sure they wish the extra money were flowing into the Treasury instead of OPEC but they still can't work up any real displeasure at something that pushes their agenda so well. So why are they going to act?
Screw the hippie crap with wind, solar, etc., we are outta time. Build nuke plants. Not in twenty years, not in ten. I want a plan to have enough nuke plants online inside of five years to make electricity cheap enough to change the economics in favor of plug in electrics. We have the tech to build a safe nuke plant now, waste disposal is still an issue but we have time to work on that problem if we can avoid western civilization collapsing. And eventually I'm sure we will perfect the greener alternative energy sources and not need so many nuke plants... or we get finally solve fusion and quit worrying about energy.
Democrat delenda est
this is not the proper channel for discussing energy policy.
He's got you talking about it, hasn't he? How hard will it be to push congress critters for the appropriate political backing when he's already convinced half the country that he's the man to follow?
Oh he might be wrong, and he might be full of crap, but he's playing politics. And in energy, you NEED politics. Otherwise your multi billion dollar wind farm gets killed by someone who is concerned about all the sparrows getting caught up in the turbine blades... poor little birdies...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You really have a severe case of ADD, if you can't get past my first line.
It takes 5.6 pounds of natural gas to provide the equivalent energy of 1 gallon of gasoline (GGE).
(1 gallon of gasoline weighs between 5 and 6 pounds, depending on temperature).
According to the Green Car Congress, a gasoline Honda Civic SE consumes 6.9 liters of gasoline for every 100 kilometers driven (34 mpg); the CNG Civic GX requires 7.4 liters gasoline equivalent (31.7 mpg), making it 7% less efficient. The GX carries 8.0 GGE, for a range of about 200 miles.
In Massachusetts, CNG is selling for $2.96 GGE, vs. $4.09 for gasoline, making it 28% less expensive.
There are approximately 120,000 CNG vehicles on the road in the US. [Gene]
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
Gotta disagree with you there, cobber. Funny how folks have just gotten used to assuming that power generation has to be some multibillion dollar centralized facility. Dude, we've got intertie now. It's the law.
Seems to me that Firefox, for example, is a pretty ambitious project, as is SETI@home. Or, for that matter, the content aggregation that takes place at any big BitTorrent site.
To assume that "somebody big" needs to carry out the work of giving this country more power generation is like asking "who's in charge of this 'internet' thing?"
You want to see us have more power? Superinsulate a frackin' building with some friends. Earthberm one. Go on Craigslist for a few weeks, accumulate some surplus foam and other materials, and build a greenroof. Or put in your own solar panels. Or buy a surplus Whisper, put it on a tall post (height is good), and get more watts per dollar than PV. Plenty of biodiesel coops out there, both for refining fuel and converting vehicles. Join one.
We don't need no stickin' megacorps. We really don't. Most forms of renewable power just don't have that serious a set of economies of scale. Think about it. Me? I'm workin' on a few fronts, most notably getting local zoning codes changed to better accomodate this sort of thing and helping to optimize a 26,000 square foot building that's been converted into workspaces for things like bikemaking, vehicle conversions, and people like me who run small manufacturing businesses and such. Hopefully we'll have our first PV up this year. We've already got a guy making hydrogen and a project to build a pretty serious wind turbine.
Don't bitch. Build. Or, as a bumper sticker I sell says, Don't fight the system; replace it.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
LNG works fine for transportation, most of the around town buses in Cleveland run on it and it makes a HUGE difference to not have them spewing particulates every time they stop and go. I think the ultimate re: electric cars is something like the Prius but split the motor out into a trailer or detachable pod, if you're going on a long trip then attach the trailer/pod and you now have an x gallon tank and a motor strong enough to keep the batteries topped off. Your electric mode becomes more efficient most of the time because you aren't dragging the weight of fuel and a motor around, but you retain the ability to use the current distribution system. This is even a good long term solution since you can go with a diesel generator and use any of dozens of renewable sources to fuel it.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
ExxonMobil doesn't consider itself to be an oil company. As the parent suggests, ExxonMobil is in the energy business.
All the major oil companies started giving lip service to this about 20 years ago in response to a fairly famous critique of the industry. It's mostly talk however. If you look at ExxonMobil's last annual statement on page 19 it says "Fossil fuels are expected to continue to provide about 80% of energy in 2030". That does not sound much like a company that expects to be a big player in any other kind of energy any time soon.
...but the presenter claimed that ExxonMobil is the second largest holder of mineral rights to uranium ore in the world.
I'm deeply dubious of this claim. One would expect to find some mention of it in the footnotes of their financial statements as it would be a material asset. While it's possible I've overlooked something I can find no mention of such mineral rights in their 2007 financial statements or annual report.
Transmission of electricity from the midwest to California would entail tremendous transmission losses.
That may be true, but California has the #2,#3, and #4 largest wind farms on the planet: Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm (690 MW), San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm (619 MW), Altamont Pass Wind Farm (606 MW)
Of course, their combined peak power is less than equal to the base power of one two-reactor nuclear power plant (~2 GW).
Ya see, I *thought* that might have been it but since wind turbines have been working and turning profits for years now, utterly unlike cold fusion, I thought perhaps you had something a bit more reasonable in mind. By what standard has wind power "failed to deliver"?
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
Of course. Earthberming a building could cause the end of all life on earth and requires at least six years of specialized training. Yeah, right.
.burn buildings down and electrocute people to death. /.-friendly a site as there could possibly be. /.ers, are capable of taking at least small steps to reduce the need for megaprojects in the first place.
I wrote as long a list as I did precisely because people's skills and resources vary. Are you telling me that "most people" have neither the skills not the money to buy a solar powered battery charger? I mean, hey, twenty-five bucks is serious money and it's hard work getting those little suction cups to stick to the window. Converting a car to biodiesel? If something that low on risk wasn't viable, half the projects posted on this site would be even less so.
solar panels . .
Unlike, say, using a backyard barbeque grill? C'mon, how frequently do homes get burnt down by solar panels? Especially since most put out 24 volts of power or even less. You're seriously pushing it here. I gave a bit of thought to the things that I suggested before I posted and not a one is limited to people with any more money or skill than is required to build a nice gaming-optimized PC. In fact, you could start with a little unit from thinkgeek, about as
I'm not claiming that the average American should put up a dozen terawatts of photovoltaics on their garage. I'm saying that most people, certainly most
Looking again, I should have put more emphasis on small starts, on things like battery chargers. As it happens, I just finished writing a blog post in which I did just that. But as for your concern about "the masses" not being able to handle something as simple as a wind turbine, dude, you're on the wrong site. What do you think "free as in speech" is all about? I posted on a site that's all about taking control of the technology around us, about not just curling up and waiting for some huge corporation, whether Microsoft or General Motors or General Electric, to tell us how they are going to run our lives.
We stop paying attention, stop keeping involved in "the means of production", and we're all screwed.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.