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Pickens Calls Off Massive Wind Farm In Texas
schwit1 writes with this excerpt from an AP report:
"Plans for the world's largest wind farm in the Texas Panhandle have been scrapped, energy baron T. Boone Pickens said Tuesday, and he's looking for a home for 687 giant wind turbines. Pickens has already ordered the turbines, which can stand 400 feet tall — taller than most 30-story buildings. 'When I start receiving those turbines, I've got to ... like I said, my garage won't hold them,' the legendary Texas oilman said. 'They've got to go someplace.' Pickens' company Mesa Power ordered the turbines from General Electric Co. — a $2 billion investment — a little more than a year ago. Pickens said he has leases on about 200,000 acres in Texas that were planned for the project, and he might place some of the turbines there, but he's also looking for smaller wind projects to participate in."
Wow. I've seen this same kind of mistake happen in the little companies I work for, spending money on stuff right before plans change. I've seen this kind of mistake but never personally witnessed one of them this big. Looks like I'm going to have to RTFA to see what changed the deal after all the checks were signed.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
These things are a great way to make a beautiful landscape hideous. And the amount of power generated considering the acreage needed is ridiculous.
Here's a crazy idea: how about nuclear power? Oh, that's right, the word "nuclear" is too super-scary for the science-based environmentalists. Never mind that they actually are better for the environment than anything else.
Yaaaahhoooooooooooooooo!!!
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Makes me think of the "Wind farm" scene in "Blazing Saddles", when Slim Pickens says "Boys, I think you'd had enough".
This is why we buy prototypes and work out the fascilities/infrastructure before we order hundreds of parts with no place too put them. Everyone always underestimates the need for a building for their new business plan...
http://www.beanleafpress.com
I'm shocked he didn't have this figured out before he plunked the $2B down for turbines.
Isn't high voltage DC the thing to do these days for sending power long distance? Is this a technical issue or a land rights issue? People not wanting HV pylons in their backyards.
Call it what you want, but this is going to be a huge blow to alternative energy in this country. This was an all out high-profile project that just fell on it's face. Pundits will be using this to slap other alternative energy projects in the face for years to come. This is the kind of thing you could dream up very elaborate conspiracy theories about. Watch the oil prices skyrocket as a consequence.
Step 1: Reduce Refining Capacity through by-outs
Step 2: Send out pundits to claim how high oil prices will go
Step 3: Get price of oil/gas high enough that alternate energy starts to become profitable
Step 4: Get people to invest lots of money on said technologies.
Step 5: ????
Step 6: Let the oil bubble burst and take the alternative energy markets with it.
I'm not sure where profit goes in there, but this also happened in the late 1970's through early 1980's. Right when other means of fuel production came online and people had invested a lot of money in the new technologies, the price of oil suddenly dropped causing the alternatives to quickly go broke and effectively stifle competition for the next couple decades.
Funny about that history not repeating itself, but sure does rhyme thing.
This was told to me by a retired GM executive and friend of the family back in 2006/2007 when the price of oil kept going up. He even gave a prediction of that the price of oil would fall around 2008/2009 and when it did, any interest in alternate fuels would go with it. Seems like he may have known something.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I've only got about 30 grand, though, so I hope he doesn't mind taking a 99% loss. On a more cynical note, I can't help but wonder if this was all some ploy to discredit renewable energy.
The ones already ordered are still being built.
If gas prices go back up giving cost parity for wind, he plans to continue the plan.
As we modernize the infrastructure he plans to continue; just the current infrastructure can't handle the increased load, so it is a waist.
If it wasn't for the government created recession he would still be pressing forward.
Dr. Strange Glove....
.
I have this mental image of T.Boone Pickens straddling one of the blades of a giant turbine as it goes round and round. He is strapped to it and screaming "Yee Haw" while waving around his Cowboy hat with one arm.
.
Then the Turbine blows up real good!
.
.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
It isn't the birds that are having problems with wind turbines, it's *Bats*
Apparently their lungs cannot handle the presure gradients around the vanes so their lungs have been exploding.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14593-wind-turbines-make-bat-lungs-explode.html?feedId=online-news_rss20
Most of Texas has its own grid, and is not very well connected with the neighboring grids. The cost of enabling that grid to distribute power to the rest of the country was far more than TBone expected. There are plenty of other places that are closer to the grid to locate his turbines.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
So roughly $2.9M per turbine. Does that include shipping? Probably not. How long until I get a positive return on my investment? 10 years, 20? Come on man, I've got my bank on the other line.
'They've got to go someplace.' Pickens' company Mesa Power ordered the turbines from General Electric Co.
1. Form new Mesa Power subsidiary called Black Mesa 2. Use extra wind generated power to open interdimensional gate 3. ??? 4. Half-Life!!!
It's not like the $2B dollars is going to go to waste. There is high demand for wind turbines worldwide, now he's got a lock on a whole lot of them. It's difficult to know if he'll come out ahead or behind (are turbine prices on the open market higher or lower than what he paid? did he get a volume discount in his order? is demand high enough and supply scarce enough that he can charge a premium?), but it won't be a total loss.
Probably the worst thing, for him, is the opportunity cost of having so much capital tied up in this - it'll take him a long time to free it up by selling or leasing the turbines to other customers.
Here's another suggestion.
High priced oil *triggers* recessions.
This would be far simpler and explain the oscilation in the price of oil after the demand destruction has fed through.
Deleted
Wind power costs about 0.055 cents/kWh. Coal has been slowly rising and is about 0.03 cents/kWh right now. Wind power would be competitive with oil and gas plants -- if it were 1998. Today, it beats both answers. Here's the problem -- nuclear and coal are the only economical alternatives for base load plants, which handle 35-40% of the total electrical power generation in this country. Of the remainder, load-following and peak plants, wind power might be useful.
The issue is, wind power is needs a lot of space to operate. And for aesthetic reasons, they need to be placed in fairly remote locations away from urban centers, which reduces efficiency. There are other geographical restrictions as well -- namely that the wind source must be fairly reliable. Electricity generated on an industrial scale can't be stored (for the most part). The grid must be designed to meet peak power requirements -- which means if you deploy wind power, you need a backup as well (such as gas turbine) -- wind power isn't a replacement in the majority of cases; It's a cost-reducing add-on.
A kWh of wind power is the cost of that infrastructure plus maintenance costs of the backup gas turbine infrastructure, when operating. The economic result here is that deploying wind power to provide a cheaper supplement to existing gas turbine and oil peak plants is viable in a few markets. But such deployment will happen slowly, over many years, as the cost of maintaining existing infrastructure exceeds the cost of building and operating new infrastructure.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The collapse of the Cap & Trade scheme.
Woohoo!
This so reminds me of something Orrin Boyle would do in Atlas Shrugged. Spending all that money because it was the socially right thing to do, but with no real plan to make it productive; because he has never cared about profit.
...the govt is now broke and he wouldn't getting enough subsidy money to make it profitable.
Make people pay for the full environmental impact of oil, and the cost of their share of wars in the middle east. Solar looks great once the real costs of fossil fuels are not hidden in taxes and the benefits of running an empire.
I don't think there's a huge conspiracy, but oil producers manipulate prices on a regular basis - they even have an official racketeering ring called OPEC. It's unfortunate that American and British companies are in on the profits, though, because if they weren't, we would have probably abandoned oil as an energy source. Relying on a finite resource that is mostly on the other side of the planet for nearly everything we consider essential to modern life seems pretty short sighted.
I live is Southern AZ where Interstate 10 runs and a road which I am driving on often. Over the last few months I've noticed a steady flow of "oversize load"s on the freeway that contain rather large wind turbine components heading eastbound, presumably heading to TX from somewhere in CA. Perhaps these are Mr. Pickens, but who knows. Bottom line is there sure have been a lot of these steadily flowing through AZ...
Becuase[sic] wind doesn't meet the needs of today's energy grid (baseline power needs, peak power needs)
Nuclear doesn't meet peak power needs either. It turns out that multiple sources can be used together -- every wind turbine spinning replaces MWh generated by gas or coal. Build enough un/negatively correlated turbines and you can count a fraction of wind generation as base. The rest replaces gas turbine output. No engineer is claiming that wind can, by itself, replace all other power demands. It can certainly play a role replacing some fossil fuel power generation, and it's nuclear waste-free!
It takes alot[sic] to maintain such a distrubuted[sic] generation system
But not so much that we can't do it. It also takes a lot to underwrite the insurance for nuclear power. So much, in fact, that nuclear power companies don't pay for it -- the US gov't does. Somehow that tidbit, a tidbit that makes nuclear power one of the most expensive options around, is rarely mentioned around here.
some people don't like the aesthetics
Some people don't like the aesthetics of coal power plant smokestacks, giant fences around nuclear plants, or what's left of the mountain after the coal or nuclear fuel is mined. No energy solution is perfect.
they grind up birds like no tomorrow.
No, no they don't. The 1980s called, and they want their built with small fast moving blades, non-monopole design, and located in bird migration routes wind turbines back.
Sure they will be nice here and there but they don't have the potential to solve the problems we have now while nuclear does.
Nuclear has the potential to be part of the solution, but it too can't solve the problem whole-hog. Nuclear isn't financially efficient now, if you try to use it for anything more than base load your efficiency drops like a rock. Solar can be used to shave some peak (in much of the world peak demand is very positively correlated with hot sunny days), wind can be used to reduce the need for fossil-based intermediate demand when it's blowing, and biomass, natural gas, and water pumped uphill (battery) can be used to make up the difference.
Enviromentalism needs to wake up and face the fact that the problem is now so bad that idealism must take a back seat to pragmatics.
The pragmatic solution is not to pooh-pooh wind. The pragmatic solution is to use a mix of non-fossil fuel approaches to (1) meet our electricity desires, while (2) reducing the amount of carbon emissions we generate as much as we can. Wind can't do all of that to maximum effect. Neither can nuclear. Neither can solar. Neither can biomass. Nor hydro. Nor natural gas. Nor whatever comes next (tidal?). But, using all of them, whenever feasible, will maximize our reduction of carbon emissions in electricity generation.
Why not support both?
Support a few technologists in Washington.
I cycle out that way, and I've never had a ride where I didn't have to fight the worst winds I've ever seen. There aren't any trees, Austin could definitely use the power, and there's not much development out that way. You'd be amazed how the wind just sweeps across a flat area where there isn't really enough water for good trees. It's nightmarish.
Oil, gas, coal makes beautiful landscape more beautiful ? Otherwise why most people have no issues binging on these and yet the mention of wind or solar they talk aesthetics and birds and bees.
I went to a talk by Pickens, and I think he's losing it. He didn't mention wind at all. He was talking about how natural gas is going to solve all our energy problems, and how we just have to convert heavy trucks to run on natural gas. He's far more optimistic about natural gas supplies than most people in the industry.
Wait a second. You're arguing that wind is better than nuclear because it requires fewer people to operate a wind farm? In case you haven't noticed, there's a recession on. Unemployment is a problem. If nuclear power plants require more people to run, wouldn't that be a good thing?
I write sci-fi for metalheads
CNN is reporting the project is "On hold" not "scrapped". They also reports the wind equipment that has been bought is going to be used.
There is a big difference between "On Hold" and "Scrapped".
There were some rumors shortly after Pickens announced this wind farm scheme that it was really a cover for a water rights land grab. What else could this mean?
Until the recession hit. That cut TBoone's cost in have. Even he lacks unlimited money.
I live in Michigan but hes welcome to place one in my backyard, as long as its run through my house and i get to incorporate as a power plant and sell the wattage myself.
Here where i live DTE Energy wont pay customers for energy production so if I have a solar panel and consistently over-produce i'll just get free energy for myself, they wont cut me a check on the extra. DTE Energy sucks.
It was never about wind, it was about WATER, and Mr Pickens' newly-granted powers of Eminent Domain!
http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories/071008/loc_302185743.shtml
http://www.junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20080731.html
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/TimothyCarney/T_Boone_Pickens_wants_your_water.html
http://seekingalpha.com/article/24410-t-boone-pickens-invests-in-water-should-you
and add them to the Dry Lake Project here in Arizona. http://www.srpnet.com/environment/drylakewind.aspx
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
One word: Craigslist. They would probably go faster if you put them in the exotic^H^H^H^H^Hadult services section
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I wonder if I actually saw those in transport? I was travelling south on 287 Sunday morning just south of Wichita Falls, TX and there was a train going north. I was surprised by the number of blades on the train. I'm guessing there were probably 50.
The Great American Bubble Machine
http://www.correntewire.com/great_american_bubble_machine_0
I'm fairly certain that Pickens is in this for the money... whether the money comes from oil or renewable energy, I don't think he particularly cares.
Why is it oil people are made out to be haters of renewable energy? They just want money, they don't have a love for black oily gunk. If Pickens can make money from renewable energy, then he'll do it. Seems pretty easy to understand to me. I doubt he just loves oil.
I also don't quite understand the "We need more clean energy" sentiment combined with the "We don't want to pay for our clean energy" and "We don't want an oil guy creating our clean energy" sentiments. It seems that we want clean energy, for free, and have it have nothing to do with a company that previously dealt with Awful Wicked Oil (tm).
I'm all for renewable energy... but it does need to be economical, and the supply needs to come from demand. And I don't want these sorts of projects flopping after MY money was used in it... e.g., I'm supportive of oil "barons" like Pickens doing these projects, not the government. Why? Because that's the whole point of private enterprise. Taking risks. Making it work. And if it works and someone gets rich from it, good for them. I won't complain. Unless I start getting forced to use it and THAT'S why someone gets rich. Which, unfortunately, appears to be the way a lot of people want it to go...
Oh well. I'm probably just cynical because I like large "cars" and don't want to spend $20k more to have it be electric or hybrid... or not spend that much more money and drive on the freeways [with crazy drunk people] in a plastic coffin :)
Obviously you don't know much about Mr. Pickens, nor Atlas Shrugged.
...which weighs more? A pound of uranium or a pound of wind?
No, the consensus is that there is a lot of natural gas to be tapped. The problem is that it still dumps CO2 into the atmosphere, and a lot of the reserves are in the same places where the oil is.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Paint the windmills to look like giant supermodels!
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
You may want to update the story summury:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/31802460
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I think a rather significant portion of his plan was that some government entity, be it Texas or the USA, would get behind it and pony up the money necessary to get the power to a distribution system.
I'm not sure that would have been such a bad idea. Here's someone putting his own money where his mouth is on national energy policy and dependence on foreign oil.
Seems like the collective "we" could have ponied up a little support as part of the Smart Grid upgrade. It fits many of the qualification for a stimulus project. Green jobs, alternative energy, Smart Grid, local jobs and it's shovel ready.
I'm not saying it was smart, only that it does seem to line up with our national priorities and why would helping out with the grid upgrade been such a bad idea? There have been public/private partnerships in other areas, why not this one?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Sounds like a perfect use of the stimulus money Texas is getting from Uncle Sam.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Nuclear is great in theory. But in reality, nuclear power plants take 20+ years to build, so they are hardly a realistic solution to today's power problems.
So lets wait five years and then not have the power for 25. Why don't we start right away, and start by building reactors that *do* use radioactive waste as fuel.
Fool? No.
Evil Genius?
Maybe... check this out:
--- begin ---
Pickens Gives New Meaning to 'Self-Government'
By Steven Milloy
July 31, 2008
The more you learn about T. Boone Pickens' plan to switch America to wind power, the more you realize that he seems willing to say and do just about anything to make another billion or two.
This column previously discussed the plan's technical and economic shortcomings and marketing ruses. Today, we'll look into the diabolical machinations behind it.
Simply put, Pickens' pitch is "embrace wind power to help break our 'addiction' to foreign oil." There is, however, another intriguing component to Pickens' plan that goes unmentioned in his TV commercials, media interviews and web site -- water rights, which he owns more of than any other American.
Pickens hopes that his recent $100 million investment in 200,000 acres worth of groundwater rights in Roberts County, Texas, located over the Ogallala Aquifer, will earn him $1 billion. But there's more to earning such a profit than simply acquiring the water. Rights-of-way must be purchased to install pipelines, and opposition from anti-development environmental groups must be overcome. Here's where it gets interesting, according to information compiled by the Water Research Group, a small grassroots group focusing on local water issues in Texas.
Purchasing rights-of-way is often expensive and time-consuming -- and what if landowners won't sell? While private entities may be frustrated, governments can exercise eminent domain to compel sales. This is Pickens' route of choice. But wait, you say, Pickens is not a government entity. How can he use eminent domain? Are you sitting down?
At Pickens' behest, the Texas legislature changed state law to allow the two residents of an 8-acre parcel of land in Roberts County to vote to create a municipal water district, a government agency with eminent domain powers. Who were the voters? They were Pickens' wife and the manager of Pickens' nearby ranch. And who sits on the board of directors of this water district? They are the parcel's three other non-resident landowners, all Pickens' employees.
--- end ---
excerpt from http://www.junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20080731.html
If this true, it is an impressive scheme.
There was an AC post to this link below.
If true, this explains the "technical problems" pretty well.
Anyway the wind blows, doesn't really matter to me, to me.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
So a $2B initial investment that requires another $2B in infrastructure to connect isn't a good idea. Sometimes decisions from the top ARE a bad idea. Pickens probably never had anyone tell him "no" before this plan could be stopped.
OTOH, if he had already gotten utility right of ways, the problem wouldn't be nearly as great.
Perhaps he'll "give" each of these systems to a small town where they will really make a difference and be appreciated?
Lots of people point out that wind energy is not yet competitive with more traditional sources -- and that government spending on green energy kills on average 2.2 jobs for every job it creates ( http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf ).
Now that one of wind power's biggest supporters (Pickens) is at least partially throwing in the towel, here's hoping that some people will begin to realize that not every "green" initiative is worth its economic cost.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
A lot of the problem is that people who support wind think it is some kind of one-size-fits-all solution to the energy problem and continue to oppose nuclear in any form.
FTA: "In Texas, the problem lies in getting power from the proposed site in the Panhandle to a distribution system, Pickens said in an interview with The Associated Press in New York. He'd hoped to build his own transmission lines but he said there were technical problems." If he could put together an order for 687 gigantor windmills, he goddamned-well knew _exactly_ where they were going to go and exactly, to the foot, how many feet/miles away the nearest 345kV line was. (substitute appropiate buzzaords). Or whatever. Engineering power distrubition is complicated and painstaking, but it's also fairly cut and dried. What "technical" issue could there possibly be here? was he planning to build a giant Tesla coil?? Sounds like bullshit to me, and i think bullshit like this does enormous damage to the credibility and viability of alt. energy. Political, environmental or financial problems i would accept at face value, but not technical power distribution problems.
You can have your electricity and might not have to suffer at the view of "ugly giant rotating turbines". But trust me, someone will be looking at them... or a nukey plant, or a coal/gas plant, or an environmentally destructive dam and reservoir. Or your cost per kwh will be much higher to support beautification, or very long distance transmission. To think different is to delude yourself.
On I-35 in Texas just before you cross into Oklahoma, there is a place that makes or stores wind turbines. There are just rows of huge blades laid next to each other visible from the freeway. Driving I-45 I regularly see blades moving from Houston towards Dallas. I figure those have arrived from Germany into the Houston Ship Channel. I wonder where they are usually going?
Or, what's the easiest way to get both right-of-way AND water rights? Uh huh, have the government condemn miles upon miles of land from everyone in the way.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Just saying, it may not be a great idea to undertake a new power source that you will ban another country from using because you're afraid they'll make some sort of terrorist weapon.
Real-world payback on silicon cells is 10+ years. Please cite your 1-3 year projection. You can't go by a best-case full-sun cell output vs. municipal kWH charges. And unless you build a battery-backed/generator system around it, nuclear will beat it on any cloudy day and every night.
Changed the subject, to make it clear:
You. Are. Stupid.
Let's break down all the reasons where this is clear:
1. "Becuase"
2. Today's energy grid is an integrated one that reaches far and wide, the wind never stops everywhere at once so can be harvested somewhere all the time. Wind power is also likely to be only a fraction of the total power and suits the peak/baseline power curve nicely.
3. Some people think Vegemite tastes good, that rap is good music, and that the moon landings never happened. What some people think aesthetic is always going to be 90% crap, and putting a coal plant side by side with a wind farm is like comparing a half rotten pile of weasel assholes with a live kitten. Don't bring the aesthetics into it unless you are also advocating tearing down every coal plant that exists because they are ugly.
4. The only thing ground up here appears to be your brain. The bird thing is bullshit, debunked, and disingenuous crap touted by people too stupid to look up a few numbers. Your fucking housecat and the rest of their species does far far far more damage to birds, likewise every large window in any suburb, and any tall building. Let's tear all that stuff down too. Or, is your claim they are "bird grinders" bullshit. (Hint: yup)
5. Wind will not solve all power problems, and despite it's usefulness, duct tape will not fix everything (for example, it won't suppress the expression of your extra chromosomes), what sort of an uncle-tom waterhead thinks wind will solve anything except a few percent of our clean power needs. Sure, we'll need nuclear but wind and nuclear are not mutually exclusive.
6. It seems to me like you used some pretty brain-dead environmentalist emotion laden-logic free views to say wind power is bad, and then turn around and say environmental compromises need to be made. I suggest learning a bit more of which you speak, because you seem to be the type of person that picks up only the first line of any article and damn the facts within.
Goddamn, I fucking hate pseudo-philosophers, especially the young-stupid ones. Grrrr.
This is probably what changed his plan http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124104549891270585.html If this is tapped and properly used we won't need wind or oil
The gun is good - Zardoz
There's lots to see and nothing to block your view.
so you are saying we require additional pylons?
Isn't that one of the major problems with nuclear power? It produces waste that we don't know what to do with. Hiding it somewhere and pretending it doesn't exist doesn't seem like a valid long term solution.
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
...and he didn't say he scrapped the plan. Just that due to the credit market it will take another couple years before the financing is in place and the transmission infrastructure won't be completed until 2013. He said it's just been pushed back 2 years, but that his plan is definitely still going to happen. I'm not sure why everyone is convinced the plan is scrapped. I heard the man from his own lips say that it's going to happen, just 2 years later than originally planned.
You can view it as a setback for Pickens and his billion dollar water/land-grab in Texas, but it's not really a set-back for energy.
The turbines he purchased put money in the coffers of the companies building the turbines, which means more turbines and commercial viability for those companies. Pickens isn't likely to take the full $2bln hit from these things, so he'll find somewhere to put them, even if it wasn't along the Pickens Pipeline that he hoped for, so that he can regain some of the lost money in the form of energy ROI. All-in-all, the industry should see it as a boon.
The funny part is, if he had planned it better, he might have gotten away without having to invest in the alternative energy aspect at all, but idiotically he bought the turbines before having it entirely planned out. Sucks to be him (okay, not really, he's still rolling in billions), but it's a real win for us.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Odd how using less electricity is never an issue when it comes to conserving resources?
Well, the other Big Dogs don't want to play, "Share the Billions" with Boone; big surprise. But I thought there was some federal law that said if you generate electricity that the power company you're hooked up to HAS to buy it at the going market rate. I know in out here in California that's the case, and the power company's make darn certain that the power that is fed to them from a home is clean, unlike what they sell to folks. It doesn't make sense that the "Federal Law Requires..." card hasn't been played by Boone's legal staff. I figure that both sides of this issue are playing chicken with the cost of building the electrical lines. But has anyone considered what factories could be built by this wind farm? Factories are moved all the time. What if manufacturers that could make products using the electricity provided by this wind farm were thrown into this mix?
I heard that he wanted water and or mineral rights on the land for his generators... planning to get money in the future (not him personally) from the need for clean water (cheaper than desalination but for profit.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Pickens chickens
Boone to bust
Ka-booone!
Pickens pickled
Rich windbag bags wind
T Boone t-boned by project losses
Project Boonerangs back on investor
What the Pickens!
Pickensian pathos dooms project
There are numerous places in the US named Black Mesa, but the Black Mesa on which the half-life location is based exists just outside of Los Alamos, NM and, based on its location (right outside LANL) and the local wind characteristics, it may in fact be a perfect spot for fielding a set of wind turbines.
Tell him to come and set up a private power generating farm here in South Africa. Our main supplier here, Eskom hasnt bothered to put any new infrastructure in place over the last 14 years, and are now floundering about trying to do some crisis management. The money is here to pay for the electricity generated. so it might be an ideal opportunity for a gutsy entrepeneur.
Uhhh you do realize that nuclear fuel is limited, and thus a short-term solution. That theoretical long-term storage is clean, but in practice the existing sites are massively leeching into water. And further, if you knew anything about how uranium is mined, your sense of "hideous" would be similarly outraged; though when the strip-mining happens in Africa perhaps you don't care. A big windmill, which will someday take on the romantic look of Dutch windmills in old paintings? You bet, you can plant that thing right in the middle of my backyard; and share the juice with my neighbors, and yourself.
seriously. Energy is more expensive here than in US.