Pickens calls off massive wind farm in Texas

[thundley4]

HOUSTON – 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."
*snip*
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.
"It doesn't mean that wind is dead," said Pickens, who runs the Dallas-based energy investment fund BP Capital. "It just means we got a little bit too quick off the blocks."

Link
The problem of getting power from wind farms to where it is needed is a problem everywhere, not just Texas. Nobody wants these huge things near them, so they have to be placed in isolated areas which means new transmission lines and all that they entail.
Yes, it does pretty much mean wind power is dead. Environmentalists don't want it, and it is unreliable anyway. I can see smaller units being used as backup power for isolated individuals, but that would involve some sort of storage batteries  for calm days.

[Wineslob]

As far as I'm concerned Mr Pickens can go **** himself.   

[Ree]

Shit....guess we won't be spendin the winter in TX...

[thundley4]

I had to do a little digging since my memory wasn't clear on this.  Bela Pelosi's investments wouldn't have anything to do with her pushing Cap-n-Tax would it?

Q:
Is Nancy Pelosi heavily invested in T. Boone Pickens' alternative energy company?
A:
No, but her husband bought stock in Clean Energy Fuels Corp. last year. It amounted to a tiny fraction of the couple's assets.
"Heavily invested" is a relative term, and so we'll just state the facts and leave it to our readers to decide whether that characterization fits or not.

Pelosi's personal financial disclosure forms show that her husband purchased stock in the company valued at somewhere between $50,001 and $100,000 on May 25, 2007.
The notation "SP" in the left-hand column indicates the purchase was by her spouse, Paul Pelosi, a successful San Francisco businessman and financier. The exact number of shares and their precise value are not known, because members of Congress are only required to disclose their family assets within broad ranges of value.

For the wealthy Pelosis, it was not a major purchase, however. Nancy Pelosi reported that the couple's total assets at the end of 2007 totaled somewhere between $35.5 million and $156.2 million, as tabulated for us by researcher Dan Auble at the Center for Responsive Politics (where Pelosi's entire disclosure form may be viewed online.) So the Clean Energy purchase amounted to, at the very most, only 0.3 percent of their holdings at the time of purchase, and probably much less than that.

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/is_nancy_pelosi_heavily_invested_in_t.html

[StantheTaxMan]

Yeah.  And the FIRST time a poor birdie got sucked up and splattered the shiite would really hit the fan....

[NHSparky]

Regardless, wind power is a nice idea for "peaking" useage, but a horrible idea as a baseline load.  For that, you need a "dense" energy source like coal, oil, or nuclear.  The cost per MwH of even wind is still well above that of the other generation methods, even though you need no fuel.

[NHSparky]

Yeah.  And the FIRST time a poor birdie got sucked up and splattered the shiite would really hit the fan....

Actually, on the windfarms in Tehachapi, Palm Springs, and up in NoCal, they figure that tens of THOUSANDS of birds are killed every year.  Hell, just the bugs going splat on the turbine blades reduces the efficiency of the generators by something like 20 percent, so they had to devise a system that would periodically spray the leading edges down so they wouldn't cake up with crap.

[StantheTaxMan]

Actually, on the windfarms in Tehachapi, Palm Springs, and up in NoCal, they figure that tens of THOUSANDS of birds are killed every year.  Hell, just the bugs going splat on the turbine blades reduces the efficiency of the generators by something like 20 percent, so they had to devise a system that would periodically spray the leading edges down so they wouldn't cake up with crap.

I'm SO glad this is the type of technology we are going to get off oil and coal for............

[Wineslob]

One "fact" Mr Pickens seems to leave out is wind power is, at best, 25% efficient. Look at how it has to be subsidized, oh wait, Mr Pickens has.

[JohnnyReb]

Wasn't California supposed to give him 5 billion up front for the project? ,,,,and didn't Nancy promise some other funds from the US gummint?

I guess the state of Texas refused to use the right of Imminent Domain to acquire the right of ways for him. He had water rights for underground water in the scrub lands of Texas that he wanted to sell in the panhandle and no way to get it there. The windmill farm was a ruse to get a right of way for the water lines, water north, power south. Maybe inflation has upped the price of politicians.

[Chris]

Does this mean he's going to focus his energy on his water pipeline?

[thundley4]

Does this mean he's going to focus his energy on his water pipeline?

What?? Energy from water?   I thought big oil bought all those patents, killed the inventors and locked the patents away.   

[Chris]

What?? Energy from water?   I thought big oil bought all those patents, killed the inventors and locked the patents away.   

He was going to put in a water pipeline somewhere and sell water to Arizona.

[thundley4]

He was going to put in a water pipeline somewhere and sell water to Arizona.

I know. It was mentioned upthread that he maybe couldn't get the right of way for the transmission lines which he may have planned to use the same right of way for his water pipeline.

The comment about energy from water is just one of the old conspiracy theories.

[Lacarnut]

It has been a bad year for Boone and Buffett. They lost their butts off in the market.

You would have thought that the infrastructure for the transmission lines had been worked out beforehand. That's the problem with green energy; it lacks the infrastructure, too costly and requires constant maintenance.