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Chinese To Supply 600 MW Wind Farm In Texas
Hugh Pickens sends in a Wall Street Journal report that Chinese banks will provide $1.5B to a consortium of Chinese and American companies to build a 600-megawatt wind farm in West Texas, using turbines made in China. The wind farm will be built on 36,000 acres, and will use 240 2.5-megawatt turbines, providing enough power to meet the electrical needs of around 150,000 American homes. The project will be the first instance of a Chinese manufacturer exporting wind turbines to the United States. China aims to be the front-runner in wind- and solar-power generation "The Obama administration is hoping a shift to renewable energy will inject new life into the US manufacturing base and provide high-paying jobs, making up for losses in other sectors. But while the US has poured money into renewable energy through tax credits and other subsidies, China has positioned itself to reap many of the benefits by ramping up its export machine."
...where the hell are they going to put them? I'm sitting here in West Texas in an office of a major tower manufacturer; and we have 80 towers worth of sections sitting in our storage lot (which is being expanded) that the company purchasing them can't find a home for. A couple of sites have been proposed, but they fell through because it would cost too much to build the infrastructure to connect them to the grid. Now they're trying to find a site in a different state. And Mr. Pickens reportedly has 200 towers built that he can't site either, my favorite quote is "Well I damn sure can't put 'em up in my yard". So good luck to the Chinese I guess. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
Why are we not using US resources for this? G.E. has been producing these turbines for years.
The door is open on a level playing field for American companies to design and manufacture wind farm turbines. The fault for why this did not happen lies within America. You want the USA to 'control' the technology? Control in the 21st century comes from innovation and first mover advantage.
I personally don't have a problem with where the turbines come from. Borders don't mean a whole lot to me and cheap, clean energy is social justice.
Let's hope the Chinese made turbines are better than the ones made in India.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Wait, Texas EXPORTS windmills, mostly to the Netherlands. I see the blades going by rail to the port all the time. The Beaumont Enterprise lists what ships are in port with cargo and destination information.
Meanwhile, 36K acres to power 150K homes? Doesn't a nice nuclear plant only need 100 acres or so to provide power that same number?
Yes but there's a big difference in how those acres are occupied. One is sparsely occupied by the windmill towers, the other is a field of impermeable ground cover.
Just saying. More nuke plants too please.
The enemies of Democracy are
China would likely benefit in repair parts and maintenance related costs. Once the components for these turbines are in place, you're not likely to just switch them out for some other manufacturer.
Hopefully they can shame the USA into taking some 'retaliatory' action.
Fingers crossed.
No sig today...
Wages are cents in the dollar. Working conditions are as cheap and unsafe as they can get. Wind turbines due to low manufacturing numbers have a high labor content as such, there is no way reasonable or acceptable way for US labor to compete and if they could of course the whole exercise becomes utterly pointless as they could not afford to pay the electricity generated killing the investment.
As long as government continue down the path of blind, deaf and dumb monkeys and don't accept the need to establish fair trade practices and import duties to ensure companies compete upon a equal basic, whether foreign or domestic, socio economic collapse is inevitable.
The WTO is nothing more than a tool of the rich to destroy the middle class, eliminating that threat to their hereditary power base and, turning the bulk of the worlds population into nothing more that working in poverty minimum wage slaves (counting India and China that is already true but the first world middle class have yet to feel the weight of the chain and the bite of the whip not since they put down the masters a century or so ago).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
By American Businesses buying finished, and partially assembled products from anywhere outside of America really, really does nothing for the average American. It also points out the contempt that investors have for contributing back to the community that they have benefited from. As much as I disagree about the allowed undermining of America's Infrastructure, Nuclear Power Plants also make an abundant supply of Radio Active Waste; that's a bad thing. But consider another question, what would happen if one were to place a large scale Automated Electronics Factory by this new power source? What is the economic impact of electronic products made without humans? What if the waste material generated by this 100% automated factory was "composted" so that future products yet to be created could already take advantage of now readily accessible mined raw materials, ready to go? And if the current factory did not have enough capacity, then an additional adjoining 100% automated factory would be constructed? Is there a Airport, Freeway, and Rail Line close by this proposed location?
You can't compete ; China is willing to allow it's workforce to get treated like crap.
About the only thing that you can do is raise import tariffs to the point where domestic product looks like a good deal - but this isn't going to happen because of the enormous power bloc that's founded on the profits of yoking the global labour pool. "Globalization" is an odd term... some people perceive it as the homogenizing of consumer culture on a global scale but the man behind the curtain is the army of low-paid workers required to support it.
The only real solution that avoids the endless spiral of the labour pool further into poverty is to wind back the clock and live by bartering products locally, which mitigates the imbalances caused by regional labour cost differences at the cost of reintroducing the imbalances caused by geographical differences in local wealth and losing the inherent efficiencies of a global economy. Then you just get the poor people invading you for your resources.. and go around the spiral again.
So another kind of globalization might work ; if similar goods were available everywhere for the same cost, everyone would have a similar standard of living, but the only way that's going to happen is if you have both energy and manufacturing technologies ..
Which means no dirty manufacturing plants, no dirty energy production, no detrimental working conditions. If you follow this spiral you end up with robot factories (who wants to work - it's detrimental to [my enjoyment | my payroll budget]), producing 100% recyclable consumer goods to order from clean or recycled materials with no unrecoverable by-products, powered by fusion (with a good PR campaign), or solar, or whatever people will tolerate in their back yard. At which point you're either socialists or a human zoo kept for the amusement of a few immortal plutocrats, because there will be no need for humans to do labour work for anything other than recreational purposes (or used as a means to keep the population under control - work or starve... hmmm, sounds familiar).
Because, of course, it doesn't say we're giving China any missile technology. It says that authority to rule on what missile technology can be exported is now going to be done at the Department of Commerce instead of wherever it was done before. It's only unnamed "critics" of the administration who are saying that this will result in more technology transfer. Of course, given that your source is the notoriously anti-Obama Washington Times, it's not too surprising that they would provide unsourced quotes about this sort of thing.
A little less transparent propaganda, please.
There is only one US company making Megawatt class wind turbines. Almost all the high quality Megawatt class units in the world come from Europe, where there has been an emphasis on research and progress on sustainable energy. The US has voluntarily stepped out of the field since the progress made in the 1980's. Deregulation of the utilities and the lack of Government incentives has killed this industry, not foreign competition. You cannot have the technological lead in alternate energy without government support.
CM www.cometenergysystems.com Blog: http://caribbeanrenewable.blogspot.com/
I'm not complaining about it, but it is a common complaint.
but, have you stood next to a wind tower? That swoosh is not exactly slight... it can be heard clearly at as far as a mile, and that's not to count the electric whine and grind of the incredibly high torque generator 150 feet off the ground in the core of the windmill. The blades can generate 75dB or more in typical wind. Standing directly UNDER the windmill is actually the quitest place, due to acoustics, and wind farms will aften take people to those spots to say "you can hardly hear it" but then they build them 1/4 mile away and I'm told over time the noise becomes like a hiss from an old monitor that can't be ignored...
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
No, it's pretty mucvh shown that's what he did. Used wind power to get the legislation to give him power of some land, create a government group for said area staffed with his employees. voted himself the water then stopped the whole wind turbine thing.
The Texas legislature should revoke and take ti all back.
All that land should be used for Industrial Solar thermal anyways, it's far more reliable and easier to maintain.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Efficency? Would you like fries with that? Cows can graze on the land the turbines sit on. There's a turbine smack-dab in the middle of a Wal*Mart parking lot two towns north of me. Turbines are fenced off with 100x100' fences, but other than that the 20 acres of "wind land" they use is up for grabs for agriculture, hunting lodges, parking lots etc.
moox. for a new generation.
Umm, we are. GE is the #2 manufactuer of wind turbines in the world. Procuring those suckers isn't the easiest thing to do, though. And the quantities Mr. Pickens wants requires a lead time far longer than he likely wanted to wait.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wind_turbine_manufacturers