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Pickens Wind-Power Plan Comes To a Whimpering End
Spy Handler writes "In 2008, billionaire T. Boone Pickens unveiled his 'Pickens Plan' on national TV, which calls for America to end its dependence on foreign oil by increasing use of wind power and natural gas. Over the next two years, he spent $80 million on TV commercials and $2 billion on General Electric wind turbines. Unfortunately market forces were not favorable to Mr. Pickens, and in December 2010 he announced that he is getting out of the wind power business.
What does he plan to do with his $2 billion worth of idle wind turbines? He is trying to sell them to Canada, because of Canadian law that mandates consumers to buy more renewable electricity regardless of cost."
the OilIgachy get to say he was full of hot air.
No one has told me that I have to buy renewable energy. Be interesting to find out what the "law" is that is forcing us to buy renewable.
Pickens real plan wasn't wind energy - it was water. He wanted the government to grant him free land for the power lines that would be required to get the power back to where it would be used (cities). The land he was trying to get was going to also be used for water transport pipelines, which is going to be a huge moneymaker in this century - particularly in the south and west. Pickens doesn't give a crap about wind energy, I'm glad he was defeated.
Green/clean/renewable/buzzword power is a funny market, I've seen them try something similar here. Basically what happens is that the current pool of power is already a mix with some parts good and bad. All the special offers do is take part of it and charge a premium for it, while the normal power becomes "dirtier". The overall production mix remains the same, the people willing to pay feelgood money are too few to actually increase demand. That and the environmentalists usually are also opposed to the large windmill parks and whatnot disrupting the natural environment, so their demands usually contradict themselves. But then of course an oil crisis will hit, prices will skyrocket and politicians will be blamed for doing nothing. You're just not going to win this one.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'm in Canada. There are several provincial efforts to specify a certain percentage of renewable power by a particular date (e.g., 25% of power from renewable sources by 2015), and/or the ability for customers to voluntarily pay more if they want to buy renewable power -- as in, pay an extra few percent on your power bill and the power company guarantees that all that money will be invested in renewable power production (e.g., wind turbines). The laws don't say "regardless of cost", and don't specify doing it by wind turbines. They usually say "achieve this benchmark for renewable power by this date". The power companies are free to achieve that goal however they want, including importing power from elsewhere (e.g., Nova Scotia recently made a deal for a new hydroelectric power project in Labrador). It *may* cost more money, or maybe not. Depending upon how high the price of oil or other fossil fuels go in the next few years, it might not actually be more expensive in the long run. Realistically, it probably will be in the short term, but I think of it as "achieve this renewable energy target the cheapest way the market can figure out", not "regardless of cost".
The state subsidy for coal electricity is absurdly high, it is still like 10x more then for renewable energy. No wonder expensive green energy projects can't compete.
Pickens is a scumbag. He doesn't care about Wind Power, he wants water. He used the guise of wind-power to try to grab land to transport water. Don't believe me? Read this: http://earthfirst.com/%E2%80%9Cblue-gold%E2%80%9D-t-boone-pickens-and-the-privatization-of-water/
Pickens placed a $1.5 billion wind turbine order from GE. But the problem: transporting the energy from West Texas to the rest of the state. Pickens planned to build his own transmission, but the approvals fell through, says economist Mike Giberson at Texas Tech.
This isn't an issue of relative energy cost. This is an issue of not being given permission to build the basic infrastructure he needed for his system to work.
The failure of T. Boone Pickens has nothing to do with "market forces". It has to do with trying to solve the wrong problem. Or not even understanding what the problem is in the first place. Just because you're rich doesn't mean you know what you're talking about.
I keep hearing the phrase "reduce our dependence on foreign oil" associated with things like wind turbines and nuclear power. Maybe somebody should do a little research and discover that 1% of the electricity in the U.S. is generated using oil as fuel. Unless you're planning on cars, trucks, buses and trains powered by wind turbines or nuclear reactors, how exactly does this "reduce our dependence on foreign oil"?
Wind power is heavily subsidised in Europe.
It's the renewable energy with the second-highest percentage for *electrical* uses (the highest being the well-established hydro) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy]. It seems to make sense to invest more in that.
Where are our nuclear power stations?
If you add up the subsidies sunk in nuclear (from the good ol' times started with the Manhattan Project), I guess you'll dwarf whatever went into renewables.
Look just at the table in [http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf68.html] (and that's by a nuclear lobby group, for crying out loud!). They don't even blush at those numbers. And I'm sure there are many hidden subsidies (think military!) and externalities they don't wwant to talk about.
You mean, heavy subsidization by the US Tax Payer? Those aren't market forces, it is stealing from the poor to give to the rich, to make them wealthier? I'll pass.
This had nothing to do with wind or electricity. This plan was a blatant attempt to steal water from Amarillo and sell it to Dallas with no compensation for the water. Amarillo and the Texas panhandle is running out of water at an alarming rate. The Pickens wind energy plan was just a ruse.
I was wondering how the crowd that claims wind and other renewables are more economical than anything else would spin this.
It can't possibly be that he lost money, if it's so economical. So, it must have been something else, like a secret agenda that required him to lose money for a greater gain.
A bit like the 200 mpg carburetor that the big corporations are keeping secret.
But, obviously I must be part of the conspiracy, since I'm not out supporting the 200 mpg carbu... I mean wind farms, enthusiastically enough.
Yeah, I'll get mod bombed for this, but big deal. I've got so many +5 informatives that I'm hardly worried. ;)
BUILD more nuke plants and then in 2040 fusion!
Only put the satellite microwave ones in areas away from where people live.
Back in 2008, natural gas prices had spiked, and it "appeared" (at least temporarily) that they might stay rather expensive. Texas is very dependent upon natural gas for electricity, so "wind power" was almost economical.
Now, in 2010, with more sources of natural gas seeming to 'pop up' due to the additional drilling in Texas over the last couple years, NG is cheap again. Wind generated electricity costs twice as much as natural gas generated electricity right now. So unless a business is just wanting to "appear green", there's no economic incentive to buy wind power right now. Would you pay twice the price for electricity just to "say" you're buying wind power?
Pickens is above all else a business man. If it won't make money, there's no point in doing it.
Picken's plan - to grab loads of pork.
Try to develop a wind or solar farm that is "close enough to be useful" transmission lines and environmental forces will put that project on hold or even make it impossible to get permits. Sometimes the "green forces" in the US are just as bad as the so called party of No in stopping things that could make alternative energy a viable energy resource. I've seen quite of number of projects just fade into the sunset because of "the environmentalist". I personally wouldn't invest in any alternative energy project until they were ready to generate power.
Pickens was one of the top cowboys in getting us into this oil mess. Then he invested oil profits heavily in natural gas, which indeed did pay off: production has risen some as consumption has risen slightly more, but prices have doubled, with frequent sevenfold spikes that last most of a year. Nice racket, but not good enough for a snakey oil salesman like Pickens.
So Pickens started pitching his plan to move America's cars from gasoline to natgas, switching the natgas flow away from our gas turbines. New combined cycle gas turbines get up to 85% energy efficiency, because the plants can usefully consume the heat, but cars will just pump it out into the air - at about 20% energy efficiency (or worse: about 17% for gasoline cars converted to natgas). Which all means that we'd have to burn 4-5x as much natgas to get the use in cars we do now in CCGT plants. Which means buying 4-5x as much gas, from Pickens, just to burn 80% out in his backyard.
He invested $2B in wind farms because he expected at least that much more profit from natgas. He's getting that profit anyway, without the wind farms. If he'd been serious about the wind farms, he'd have them up and running, producing power, instead of letting them depreciate and then selling them to a foreign country.
Pickens has done all he could to get us into this energy crisis, and has no skills in getting us out of one. Indeed, if oil money weren't so easy once you're in the old boy club, that old boy wouldn't have made much anywhere that takes skills that actually serve and develop a market, rather than shooting fish in a barrel - Texas style, which means oil barrel.
--
make install -not war
I am no expert but I wonder if the majority air/water pollution is coming from automobiles, trucks, and buses.
Nope, cargo ships. Each one pollutes like 50 million cars.
So if Pickens buys water and his water actually becomes critical at some point, eminent domain will work, for once, as it was intended: the government will take the damn water and the public will at least be dealing with a regulated monopoly. Politicians can be bought in the short term, but an entire starving (thirsting) populace tends to destabilize the best of plans.
He's not dumb, just came out on the wrong end of the stick this time. He's made and lost millions betting on one thing or another. THAT is how America's do things. They take RISKS. If your risk pays off, you become wealthy, if not, you don't. Look at Donald Trump...he's made and lost more money than a lot of people could ever dream of having. People try to trash "the rich", but if it wasn't for them taking a risk, we'd still be riding horses to and from work in the dark, coming home to the oil filled lamps!
That bullshit isn't good reading for anyone.
Well OK, if it a better plan then why try to hide the fact that what he really was after was water rights not wind power? What a bunch of bullshit. If it is better, then be honest about it. He isn't being honest, and you aren't either.
No. I don't think the problem is people interfering with "Atlas" but not pandering to him.
This is American business remember. It is likely that he was depending on some sort of subsidy or handout or other sweet special deal and that didn't go through.
Infact, I am pretty sure that's what happened in this case.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
What does a story about a failed architect have anything to do with wind turbines?
To understand wind power, look at the wind map of the United States. Wind turbines aren't useful unless the average wind speed is in the 8 m/sec range and up. Note the huge high-wind area from the Texas panhandle up to Canada. That's where Pickens wanted to operate. Good place for wind turbines, but no nearby place that needs the power. So some long transmission lines were needed. The problem is not that "regulators" wouldn't let Pickens build transmission lines. It's that he wanted governments to pay for them. See Pickens' testimony before Congress. He wanted eminent domain powers and tax credits for high-tension lines. Back in 2009, though, he couldn't raise the $2 billion needed to build them.
Those wind charts come in much finer detail. Look at the California wind map. There are four really good wind areas in California, and they all have large wind farms operating. There's room for further expansion out at Mojave, but the other three sites are essentially full. Those are all successful operations, because they're reasonably near big loads.
Also, the Pickens claim that collecting wind power over a large area would provide significant base load capacity may be bogus. See the live data for the PJM grid. (This brings up a big Flash application showing what the power grid for the Northeastern US is doing. Switch one of the panels to "Wind Power" and set the scale to "All Data".) Within a 3-day period, total wind power for the entire Northeast US can range over an 8 to 1 range. That's from real, operating wind farms.
I mean that whole HFCS is horrible, you should use sucrose. The weird part is when you talk about soft drinks. (Which is usually the main thing people complain about it.) Many soft drinks (like cola) are acidic. Sucrose breaks down into fructose/glucose in an acidic solution. That means at least when it comes to soda there is little difference between HFCS and sucrose because the soda itself turns the sucrose basically into HFCS
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Kind of a waste to try to use solar power for us who live in a rain forest. When you don't even see the sun for months I doubt that solar would produce much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Finally, electricity comes to Canada. We shall use it to light our National Igloo on windy days.
We will plant them all along the Only Road in Canada. Life has been hard up here since the Cola Wars so we are not so proud as to refuse second hand generators from a down and out Yankee billionaire.
It's amazing how many people still think solar==electricity.
Houses should be built with solar in them.
Not for the electrical, although that might be an okay idea for some stuff. But if you have to convert to 110, just no, it's not there yet. The only stuff on solar should be operating at the voltage the solar panels produce.
No, the solar that should be build in is stuff like solar heated water and solar power water pumps (To a tank in the attic) and stuff. That's what houses should be build with.
And ground-source heat pumps are so obvious I'm always amazed it took this long. Seriously, the ground ten feet down is almost always closer to 'room temperature' than the outside air, so it's almost always more efficient to use it to cool or heat with.
Also, what's a solar cooling chimney?
I always thought they should start making window AC units with solar panels that you put in the roof. Again, without voltage conversion. They work off whatever the solar panel is producing. You could install them if you had central heating and air, and just leave them there, slightly below central AC temp...when it gets hot enough, and there's sunlight to operate them, they'll try to keep things 'topped off' so the big unit doesn't have to run. Otherwise, whatever, no harm done. (People who don't have central air could get an adapter that switches them onto an AC line when there's not enough sun.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Correlation, causation, etc. Is it possible the manufacturer using HFCS tends to use lower quality, cheaper ingredients in general? Ive seen NO study which shows any potential for a mix of fructose and glucose to cause hives (though I suppose it could be other ingredients in the corn itself-- do you have corn allergies?).
Calling a Texas oilman a Yankee [anything] is mildly offensive. The north and the south of the US still dont play nice, the stereotype of the stuck up autocratic Yankee and the dimwitted racist southerner is alive and well and sadly theres enough people on both sides that fulfill the stereotype to keep it that way for a long time.
i wage a holy war against the apostrophe.
My bad. Sorry for the typical Canadian ignorance of American cultural values. I take back "Yankee" and substitute "Texas".
Much shame. Back to my igloo.
If people are fat because of HFCS, then it's not their fault for simply eating too much. It's someone else's fault. (Diet plan for weight loss: eat less. If it's not working, eat even less. Continue with these actions until you've reached your desired weight. End complete diet plan.)
Also, big companies make HFCS. So there's a long term benefit from demonizing it. Someday, some trial lawyers will find enough jurors who've been indoctrinated with enough hatred that they'll be able to cash in by suing food producers. It took 30-40 years for smoking, but the lawyers eventually made hundreds of billions of dollars.
Meanwhile, fructose is in your honey and your strawberries and most of the rest of your "healthy" fruits causing no particular harm. But since when were witch hunts about reality?
All the subsidies and tariff protections should be ended though. All of them.
>I always thought they should start making window AC units with solar panels that you put in the roof. Again, without voltage conversion. They work off
>whatever the solar panel is producing.
Who are "they" and why are you waiting for "them?" Why aren't YOU doing it?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
lol, no worries, just thought i'd point out some useless information.
i wage a holy war against the apostrophe.
And when the parts are sold up north in Canada by a .. is it still carpetbagger like?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Um, they are the people who make air conditioners.
I am not doing it because I don't have a air conditioning plant.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Quite so - a mere few pages before a night sleep guards against insomnia very well!
The US gas production is more and more dependent on shale gas production, due to the progress of the hydraulic fracturing technique . Although the American Petroleum Institute claims that there this technique pose little or no threat to underground drinking water, environmentalists say otherwise and their voice has been gaining strength thanks to the recently released Gasland documentary film.
What is clear to me is that there is no reason to explain why Dick Cheney exempted the gas drilling industry from the Safe Drinking Water Act, but to protect the gas industry profitability...
To be fair with Democrats, I also have to say that Obama strongly supports shale gas extraction. Good luck, America!
Solution: nuclear powered ships. As a bonus, the ships can go really fast.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6OHHGrVM3g
(in the middle he says some standard anti-nuclear bullshit, but otherwise it's a great clip)
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Wrong story. "The Fountainhead" was about an architect (Howard Roark). Atlas Shrugged was primarily about a railroad tycoon (Dagny Taggart), a steel baron (Henry Reardon) and a philosophist-hero (John Galt).
Learn about Photography Basics.
The only reason why france has any breeder reactors is because they are government owned and operated at a huge loss.
Actually, that's not what happened. In fact the Congress has been implementing more wind subsidies because the market has been shrinking otherwise. What happened to wind market was a combination of two things: back in 2008 debt markets and natural gas prices collapsed almost simultaneously. Debt markets have recovered, but natural gas prices have not. Today it's much cheaper to build natural gas power plants than it is to develop wind farms. Really, though, Pickens should've seen it coming 2 years ago (and privately he did - he's been trying to sell all those GE turbines for a while now).
One is really left to question, just who DOES elect this Canadian government?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Increased use of natural gas was a big part of his plan. He wanted to see truck fleets (like Overnite, Old Dominion, your various chain grocery stores, etc.) converted through retrofit and/or attrition.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
...in contrast to other farm crops or any other agriculture? Is it just because the first primaries are in Iowa/Idaho?
The corn lobby is very powerful, as the rather expensive ethanol subsidy was extended for another year in the tax cut deal, adding another $7 billion to the deficit. Kudos to Senator Dianne Feinstein who at least tried to cut the ethanol tax credit slightly to save about $2 billion, but she was rebuffed. Hopefully she won't be overly punished for defying the corn lobby.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_tax_deal_corn_lobby_kickback_FhJ8HlZFoMmg1ZQg1aZr0L
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6BE4XY20101215
I live in Quebec Canada, We have ample water and thus hydro-electric power. My city (Montreal) with around 2 million homes, have these homes entirely heated and cooled by electricity. At 4c per kwh, why not. We like clean unpolluted air and ground water. We like electric cars, not gas or oil fueled vehicles, but the major limitation to conversion to all electric cars is the battery. It needs to be able to work at -30F as well as +90F. We are mainly anti-energy polluting industries. Our overall cancer rates are lower than our neighbors. We think we know why.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Nuclear Power.
None of the alternative energy plans can provide electricity on a 24-hour basis. If we're all to drive Al Gore's pokey electric cars, we need a way to charge millions of batteries at night. That means producing enormous additional amounts of electricity. Electricity green energy (wind and solar) can't produce once the Sun goes down.
We built all of the useful dams on all of the useful rivers decades ago.
Green pundits will never allow coal fired plants, and they don't like burning anything. What they like is wind and solar.
Ethanol is very hard to produce using low-sugar crops like corn and grasses. Beat sugar makes more sense, but the Fed is owned by Agribusiness companies like ADM. It would cost a lot of money to switch away from corn. Since the 60s corn was introduced into nearly everything we eat.
If anyone thinks we're protecting Ma and Pa farmer on the plains, think again. They either went bankrupt in the 70s or sold out when the kids graduated and moved away. The remaining independent farmers either don't farm or are being squeezed out through skillful cross pollination of their crops from neighboring corporate farms.
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
The Passivhaus concept (if that's the right word for something that have 25000 certified structures worldwide) looks very intriguing. I'm trying to convince a homebuilder friend of mine to consider the concept but he's much more conservative in his thinking than I.
Only 13 of these are in North America but there are many examples in Germany and Scandinavia. There is one in LaFayette, LA so this can be made to work for hot, humid climates.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Mr. T. Boone (not to be confused with Slim) may be out of the game for now, but he gets big bonus points with me for being a pioneer and trying to lead the way. It won't be that many years before people like him will be belatedly lauded for clearsightedness and wisdom in the face of our $600Ba oil deficits.
In the meantime, there's plenty of other wind action happening across the US (not to mention China, which is trying to corner the manufacturing market). There's SO much wind energy being wasted in the Midwest that T. Boone might want to invest instead in some of those 15MW monsters the Spanish are building.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson