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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.
The Gish Bar Times - Blog covering Jupiter's moon Io
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.
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.
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).
There was talk about building one over the Senate but it's believed the upward rushing hot air would cause a massive drop in air pressure for the surrounding neighborhoods endangering public health. The current system of not requiring Senators to attend most sessions seems to be working.
As a percentage of GDP, the U.S. debt situation is about the same as Germany, France, and Canada, and is considerably better than Japan and Italy's. It's a common misconception that the U.S. is badly in debt. For some reason people keep looking at the raw dollar values. In raw dollars, the U.S. has huge economic figures because its population is significantly larger than all the other G8 nations, and its per worker productivity is the highest in the world. Once you account for this (by dividing by GDP), its debt load is pretty much in the middle of the other G8 nations.
While you're doing that, you might want to look at the FTSE 100 (UK), the DAX (Germany), and the CAC 40 (France). They all do pretty much the same thing as the S&P 500.
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.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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.
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.
A few years ago, I worked for the Evil Empire (ExxonMobil) as a summer intern. At that time, engineering students nearing graduation were a little nervous about working in the oil industry. What would happen to us if we spent most of our careers in oil, and then suddenly alternative energy sources took off? (It was kind of a dumb thing to worry about in retrospect. Major career changes are the norm.)
To convince us to stick with the company, a senior engineer gave us a presentation. He said first of all that our fears weren't unfounded. All the oil majors anticipate major technology changes to occur during our lifetimes. We will have to totally change gears and move to oil sand, oil shale, nuclear, or whatever.
The second thing he said was more interesting. ExxonMobil doesn't consider itself to be an oil company. As the parent suggests, ExxonMobil is in the energy business.
That's not just bluster, either. I haven't tried to independently verify this, but the presenter claimed that ExxonMobil is the second largest holder of mineral rights to uranium ore in the world. The largest is the Russian government.
I think you are referring to a solar tower. They are neat, in that if built right, they could last damned near forever, potentially generating energy at very low operational cost.
Additionally, since they operate on top of a heat sink with several days of thermal mass, they could easily be used as a 24x7 "base load" alternative energy power plant.
However, they aren't particularly efficient, they haven't been well tested at larger scales, and present a number of fairly serious engineering challenges. The taller the central tower, the more efficient, but building a mile-high tower isn't cheap. And while the "several days" of base load could be turned into a week or more with the correct engineering, that raises construction costs significantly...
Before solar towers can reach the critical mass of economic viability, other technology that's more (downward) scalable will probably win out first. Quite easily, IMHO.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
'Pedantic' isn't an adjective; the word 'pedantic' is an adjective.
You give us pedants a bad name.
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.
Yeah, that's because nearly all their current assets are in oil, and they know that investors read those statements.
Reality, folks! They'll do anything to make money. Most alternative energy is only profitable after short-term govt incentives. If they can arrange for solar energy that's in their reach and not their competitors, they'll go for it hard-core. If the technology is too "small" (easily implemented on a very small, local scale at low cost) they'll do everything they can to torpedo it.
Picture it: You are part owner of XYZ gasoline-selling corporation. You are there with your partners. You profit when the company does, you lose money when the company does. You read yesterday that people can create their own gasoline out of used clothing. Do you (A) Try to promote the use/sale of cheap, used clothing? (B) pretend like you don't know what's happening (C) try to figure out how your company can remain profitability despite this new threat?
If you answered (A) or (B), it's because you have never been part owner of XYZ gasoline-selling corporation. Real altruism only exists in the absence of interest in the issue at hand. You can only really be altruistic with regards to child care if you aren't a child care provider. You can only really be altruistic about paper production if you don't make/sell paper. You can only really be altruistic about alternative energy if you aren't an energy company.
The actions of any large conglomerate with respect to society is like anyone: they'll work to amplify any cost they have to pay, and downplay any benefit they receive from others. (EG: you) Think about it: How much attention would you give if you drove your mother's car to the grocery store to get yourself groceries, vs. your mother driving your car to get her groceries?
Only when you are of significant means and/or maturity do you not actually care about the difference. Pretending that *any* company operates otherwise is naivety.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
You forgot the most economical viable but somewhat paradoxically unpopular course of action: Get serious about efficiency and simply use less energy.