http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/pickens-drops-plan-for-largest-wind-farm/?hp This man makes Mother Theresa look like Madoff. His charity and benevolence knows no boundaries. T. Boone Pickens, contemplating how much money he has lost, and trying to hatch another money making scheme in the wake of a total lack of interest in his windfarm scam. July 7, 2009, 9:01 am Pickens Drops Plan for Largest Wind Farm By Kate Galbraith T. Boone Pickens, the legendary oilman, has abandoned his plan to build the worldâs largest wind farm, according to a report in the Dallas Morning News that was confirmed by a spokesman for Mr. Pickens. The report states that Mr. Pickens will instead build a handful of smaller wind farms around the Midwest. Possible locations include Wisconsin, Oklahoma and Kansas and Texas. The Texas Panhandle was the to be the site of the original wind farm. Mr. Pickens has said in the past that he had to delay his wind plans due to the financing difficulties that have hit wind farms across the country in the last nine months, along with a fall-off in natural gas prices. The latest scaling back, according to the Dallas paper, is due to transmission constraints. Texas plans to build about $5 billion worth of transmission lines to help carry the wind from West Texas, but they will not go where Mr. Pickens had hoped. Originally he had even planned to build his own transmission lines. Meanwhile, Mr. Pickens has embarked on a round of media appearances to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the launch of his energy plan, which promotes natural gas as a fuel for cars â as well as greater use of wind energy in electricity generation â as a method of getting the nation off of foreign oil. In an early-morning appearance on Squawk Box, a CNBC show, Mr. Pickens said that while the climate bill was âextremely important and all,â he was still focused on getting the nation off of foreign oil. âThe security issue doesnât go away,â he said.
1) To build the "world's biggest anything" is usually a good sell-signal. 2) He may be 20-to-50 years "ahead of his time". We'll see.
Retarded. Another guy trying to jump on the "green" bandwagon. And an oil man ta-boot, how ironic. Building the 'biggest' wind farm, he has no idea what he's doing that's clear to see, if he did he wouldn't be building a windfarm to begin with. They don't produce hardly any energy and they alter the weather system. "University of Maryland have told DiscoverNews that they have conducted experiments on the affects the 300 foot turbines would have on the wind. Considering the conservation of energy, moving the turbines (to create electricity) would result in a drop of wind speed by about 5-7 mph. More importantly, the resulting winds would ripple through the atmosphere downstream and impact weather systems in a way not fully understood yet. Rather than get into the physics of what could happen in may different scenarios, wind sheer of any sort in the central plains is not a good thing. Think tornadoes!" Just goes to prove its a bad idea. But to be fare: A noble attempt. -troll
No kidding. It is more costly to build windmills on a large scale and profit from the output compared to other types of energies.
His hedge fund went from 4 billion to 1.5 billion. His investors lost 60%. Life's good with other people's money.
The started guy started out as a Wildcatter, He still is one at heart. Of course it may be his water holdings and not his oil that makes him appealing.
You really should take the time to float test these kinds of studies. The roof of the Sears tower in Chicago is 1450 feet off the ground and one side of that building is 229 feet wide. Each side presents a surface area of 332,050 sq.ft. Since the average wind turbine has 3 145 foot blades which average about 6 feet in width you're talking about 2,610 sq. ft. So, it's going to take 127 wind turbines just to equal one side of the Sears tower. And, that's not even going into the relative wind resistance that each presents to the prevailing wind it encounters... Point is, I doubt that all the wind turbines that currently exist in the world comes close an appreciable fraction of the total square footage of all the skyscrapers and large buildings just in Manhattan. Now, add up all the large cities in the world and ponder the total square footage that the wind smacks into there. How come this argument about negatively impacting the weather only crops up now? I bet the answer is found in the footnotes of that study, specifically who funded it...
There are massive wind farms planned and being developed in Wyoming (where I'm from) right now, we have a blatantly anti wind Governor but believe me the big companies are signing very very lucrative leases with a lot of landowners. In certain areas of the state there is excellent transmission capability, but the majority of the state is severely lagging in that department. I have never heard of the turbines lowering wind speed argument, but I will have to look it up. The sentiment on this board is very interesting.