T. Boone Pickens Abandons U.S. wind power

Wind Power is going away, again, because of the same old problem: It is unsustainable. Who would burn more than 3 barrels of oil to recover 1 barrel? This is the fraud of wind power with an EROEI of 0.29. Good riddance!
And Merry Christmas to all.

I’ve made a nice walk today in a landscape similar to that on the video, only covered with 40 cm of snow. Beautiful weather, freezing cold.
Non of the wind mills was producing any power. No wind.
And the solar panels on the roofs due to the thick pack of snow also out of order.
It’s 100% in need of back up power
Wind and solar therefore isn’t alternative energy but obsolete energy.
The ultimate waste of money.

Merry Christmas to all!
As a Canadian citizen, resident and taxpayer, I must say – this news is craptastic!!!!
As a regular reader of WUWT, I must also say yuck. This plan of soaking the taxpayer to build wind power monstrosities is a terrible idea for all the reasons we well know.
I need to call my Minister of Parliament and the Prime Minister!!
Best to all this holiday season.

Surely T. Boone Pickens must have been a sidesman for Bleeding Gums Murphy? Before he met Bart and Lisa of course…….

This is a more important landmark than Climategate.
TBoone isn’t dumb, to put it mildly. He knew from the start that wind power was just another name for natural gas, with the windmills supplying the subsidies and decoration and regulatory approval while the natural gas supplies the electricity. Now that he’s decided to give up the pretty pinwheels and produce only the electricity, others will follow.

Keep the turbines please! They are useless!

The Pickens plan was never about wind power. It was about water. Pickens has groundwater rights on the land where his wind turbines stand (http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/4275059). Wind power was merely window dressing. And since Texas became the state with the most wind power production, electricity prices there have risen more than 50%. Green energy is NOT cheap.
We need inexpensive domestic energy. Energy independence should be the next major goal of the US. We can do it, but it will require a commitment to new nuclear technologies. We need to power a new industrial revolution to regrow the middle class. If we don’t revitalize our economy starting with energy, we either 1) fall under the shadow of China and lose our leadership position, or 2) have to fight for limited foreign energy resources and likely wind up on the losing end. We must become competitive again, and not through a low-wage workforce, but through more efficient production by innovation. We will have to change our mindset from open warfare between business management and labor to partnership for the benefit of all. We will see more jobs when businesses become more profitable and need to grow. Government can’t create jobs, but it can impead that process by keeping taxes high and over-regulating. Today, too many businesses are dependent on markets created by government regulations. Regulations also serve to limit competition. The big boys like that. Increasingly, the free market is a fiction.

“After 30 months, countless TV appearances, and $80 million spent on an extravagant PR campaign, T. Boone Pickens has finally admitted the obvious: The wind energy business isn’t a very good one. ”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704368004576027310664695834.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

This is beautiful:
“Today the Obama administration made a formal complaint to the World Trade Organization. It says China is illegally subsidizing its wind companies. ”
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/12/22/pm-major-investor-pulls-out-of-wind-power/
I thought all green jobs on the planet were by their very definition subsidized?

As a fellow Texan, if you ever have the chance to shake hands with T. Boone Pickens, be sure to count your fingers afterward.

I could have told TBP not to invest in wind, saved him billions and I would have taken just 10% of the savings!
I hope the UK Energy Minister follows TBP’s decisions on wind. That will save the UK taxpayer billions.

Pickens is a very bright guy, who has made his fortune exploiting the unintended consequences of Government regulations. In this case, the subsidies for putting up windmills have allowed him to acquire a lot of property and water rights, plus sell natural gas to backup the nonexistent “wind power”.
He is primarily a “vulture capitalist” who buys up firms with illiquid assets and big obligations; he closes the company, fires the workers, sells off the assets, stiffs the creditors, banks the money, and goes to the next opportunity. The Congress has just handed him a windfall in the form of the estate tax, which will allow him to work his magic on family firms whose founder dies: Treasury gets its cut, the Chinese get the machinery and intellectual property, the heirs get (maybe) a new car, and the employees and creditors get bupkis. Given that, he has no need to continue scamming “renewable energy”.

Three words: impending Spanish insolvency.
Thanks in part to “green” subsidies. And they bang on about sustainability.
Take note, Pickens, or change your name to Slim.

What happens to those massive concrete slabs embedded in the ground when the turbines are taken away?

Hoosier is correct in that T. Boone Pickens is still keeping his water rights in Roberts and other counties, even as he abandons wind power. Pickens is a firm believer and practitioner in the art of using S.E. M. – someone else’s money – to accomplish his goals. If he has not found enough outside takers for his wind energy plan, then that’s the end of the plan. He is keeping the water because he plans to sell it down state to San Antonio or elsewhere – provided that the purchaser pay for the pumps, pipeline, rights of way and other assorted costs.

There are numerous wind power projects in the State of Washington but I do not seem to find a report on the actual power produced. On clear days I can even see some of the towers of one project but only a few of 100 plus of them. This morning it is not clear so I’ve no idea what is going on.
In searching for info, I found a site that claims to be “A Social Action Network fighting for Energy Independence” and operates under the heading of “Push.PickensPlan.com” —
The site appears to be about 2 years old; had minor action for about a year, and now seems abandoned.
Questions come to mind:
When will the site be taken down and will its bones be around for a long time so that future historians will know about such things?
When subsidies are withdrawn or decreased for wind projects will they be maintained? If not will they be dismantled?
The states that will be most impacted by the Obama-EPA war on coal power plants will require higher priced power. What will that be? Who will pay?
Lots more but it is Christmas morning. Using cheap hydro power from a Columbia River dam I’m going to bake a pecan pie and take it to the neighbors. They have the turkey in the oven.
Merry Christmas!

Here’s that missing link:
http://push.pickensplan.com/profile/WashingtonStateforSolarandWindPower

Wind power isn’t the only alternative energy source on the chopping block.
Taxpayer funded SpectraWatt (a solar cell manufacturer) is shutting down it’s New York plant after less than one year in business. Reason- global COOLING in Europe! Seems there is little demand for solar cells when the skies are gray and cloudy.
Hopefully, this is the beginning of a trend…
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20101222/BUSINESS/12220339/Solar-cell-maker-SpectraWatt-plans-shutdown
Merry Christmas, All!

The wind farm was subsidized icing on dog turd. He was after eminent domain in order to get aquifer water to Dallas. Some handy legislation was passed, or rather buried, in bigger water bills that would allow land condemnation for a water pipeline to run next to windmill powerlines in order to get needed power AND water to far away places in Texas, namely Dallas. The ranchers that were owners of that soon to be condemnable long strip of land weren’t happy.
While he tried to win their cooperation by dancing a carrot, as in letting them in on the “water company”, he failed to ask first. In Texas, you don’t take unless you are willing to stare down a gun barrel pointed at you. Apparently, he flinched?

WUWT said: “Unfortunately market forces were not favorable to Mr. Pickens, …”
But the article cited says this:
“Two years ago, 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,….” http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/12/22/pm-major-investor-pulls-out-of-wind-power/
So, it was not market forces but government bureaucracy that caused Pickens to back off for now. I would think WUWT readers would be appalled and press the government to give Pickens the green light for his enterprise. (I don’t know if the approval is needed from Texas state government or the federal government – or both.)

I thought this was the only way to save the country if not the world and now T Boone is quitting, so he is was only interested in making a buck, not in saving the planet, what will you tell me next, there is no Santa Claus?
Merry Christmas Everyone.

Amazing.
One can’t help but wonder how much of this story will be covered in MSM. I recall the media going ga-ga when TBP announced his big wind idea. I also remember some time later it being reported that TBP wouldn’t permit any of the windmills on his personal ranch in Texas – too ugly.
Here’s a question: if these windmills are ugly now, what will they look like in 20+ years if indeed, natural gas, nuke, oil and coal will rule the future of energy? Will we look back and ask, “what on earth were we thinking?”

A Happy Harrop and the best of the season to all.

To add on to what Hoser said, he apparently was having trouble running water lines from Sweetwater to the Dallas area as he would have to buy the land to place the piping on it’s own. But if he could place energy transmission lines from Sweetwater to Dallas, he could bury the water lines at the same time. It wasn’t about the wind power as much as it was the subsidized transmission lines and greater ability to use eminent domain to place his other pipelines in at the same time.

Boone was never really interested in Wind. That’s was just to help sell his fracking B.S.

Between McGuinty and the BC green nuts, Canada will find some politicians that will waste taxpayers money by helping a green friend billionaire south of the border… Look for a PR campaign in the Globe and Mail to seal the deal…

“You reach your goal by hitching up your pants and wading back into the fight.”
= when you are in a hole you keep digging.
UK’s wind power is 1.0% of consumption at time of going to blog and with Huhne shutting down old nuclear (20%) and loading coal and gas (63%) with green taxes we can all look forward to freezing in our homes in a few years. The French currently send us a 5% nuclear input through the link but I fear we are going to be relying on them for survival in the coming years.
This is lunacy and its time Huhne and the government were decommissioned so this Climate Act can be overturned and the wind racket investigated.

@Phillip Bratby says:
**************************
December 25, 2010 at 9:40 am
Meanwhile in denmark:
E.ON AG, Germany’s largest utility, said its 207-megawatt Roedsand-2 offshore wind park in Denmark was operating at 130 megawatts capacity today because of ice on the turbines.
“Stopped turbines must be restarted at site which cannot be done at present weather conditions,” the Dusseldorf-based company said in a market message via the Nord Pool Spot AS exchange in Oslo at 12:49 p.m. local time.
*****************************
There HAS to be something wrong with those numbers!
There is no way in this world that they would be getting 66% of plated capacity EVER, let alone if half the turbines were iced up.
Have the reporters missed out a decimal place?
And in the UK the total generated electricity over the last 24 hours was 990,653 megawatt hrs, of which windmills contributed 10,261 Mw hrs or about 1.0%, of total generated power by all means.
This is from a plated installed capacity of 5,194 MW. So the % efficiency over the last 24 hours wind alone was 8.23% (nowhere near 50% is it?)
(There is a potential production of 124,656 MW hrs over the same 24 hour period, at 100% efficiency, if you believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden)
May have got the numbers wrong, too much brandy on the Christmas pudding
all the best
P

Gone with the wind?
“Wind speeds have slowed over three decades across the Northern Hemisphere.
Increasing amounts of vegetation could be causing up to 60% of a slowing in wind speed across the Northern Hemisphere, according to researchers analysing three decades of wind-speed data in Nature Geoscience1 today.
The decline is a potential concern for wind-turbine efficiency. But researchers cannot tell whether the effect, an average 10% slowdown, will make much difference to wind turbines — the slowing winds measured are at 10 metres above the ground, whereas turbines operate at 50–100 metres up, where there is little global data.”
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101017/full/news.2010.543.html

I’ve been fortunate to live in the Northwest (Central WA) where there is arguably more majestic beauty than any place on Earth. Recently I’ve been commuting the gorge once a week. What was once a magnificent panorama of basalt cliffs, lava strewn hillsides and picturesque vineyards has become a gaudy industrialized eyesore. flashing red lights by the thousands mar the starlit evening skies and in daylight, the mostly motionless, stark, obscenities stand waiting for the updrafts on the hillside that also brings the raptors to soar, unaware of the hazard the turning clubs represent.
Am I a little hypocritical to favor the massive dams while condemning the wind farms. Perhaps, but no more than the environmentalist who sees no destruction in these wasteful, destructive, ugly monsters. While the dams are problematic, those problems pale in comparison to the benefits they provide. Flood and erosion control, creation of navigable waterways, and the cheapest source of sustainable energy. My electric bill will go up 30% next year because of the need to purchase back-up power that is not needed from time to time on the rare occasion that the windmills turn.
Knowing that decommissioning them will be as costly as their construction, we can be certain that they will remain an eyesore forever, regardless of their success.
I am currently working with the developers of a promising new modular nuclear power plant that has minimal visual impact (all but the control facility and turbine generator are underground), it’s passive safety systems will be more reliable than the currently operating nuclear facilities, it’s components will be largely available in the US (current designs will require as much as 70% of their components to be purchased overseas), and it can be built progressively 45MWe at a time as demand grows. It can be constructed on site at existing coal fired plants utilizing the existing distribution network when those facilities are no longer cost effective (or legal). Yes, federal assistance was involved in the development of this design, but the difference here is that this technology is being developed and promoted through private enterprise that promises to re-generate domestic industries lost for decades when the nation turned its back on nuclear power. I have been visiting these steel mills, fabrication facilities, engineering firms and see the investment and growth being generated by the new nuclear age. Here the website for the NuScale modular nuclear power plant. Take a look at the future. http://www.nuscalepower.com/

@Phillip Bratby says:
December 25, 2010 at 9:40 am
Meanwhile in denmark:
—————————————
Realtime in denmark:
http://ny.energinet.dk/Flash/Forside/index.html

Erik says:
“Realtime in denmark:
http://ny.energinet.dk/Flash/Forside/index.html
”
Beautiful, thanks! I find it interesting that while they pump 1GW of superfluous electricity from Northern Germany’s wind turbines through to Norway and Sweden, they also import net 6GW equivalent of gas. Kinda dwarfs all the wind power toys…

DirkH says:
“they also import net 6GW equivalent of gas. ”
Oh, sorry, make that 9GW – i overlooked one “entry” pipeline, makes about 12 GW coming in and 3 GW leaving to Sweden ATM.

Speaking of wind energy, Grouse Mtn. Resorts in Vancouver BC built a wind generator up on their ski hill. The project came with all the usual hoopula about how many houses it could power, being green and all that. I cannot find any information about its output compared to nameplate so being a private company I guess they do not have to divulge that information. Anyhow go to this site and you can see how they are paying for it, hint take the tour. Maybe Pickens should have had tours.
http://www.grousemountain.com/Winter/The-Eye-of-the-Wind/Tour-Information-Attraction.asp

Haven’t been able to find the power being produced but there is this set of facts about the Wild Horse wind farm near Ellensburg, WA.
http://www.pse.com/energyEnvironment/energysupply/pages/EnergySupply_ElectricityWind.aspx?tab=3&chapter=5
One item is concrete: Each tower foundation reaches a minimum depth of 25 ft and a maximum of 32 ft depending on bedrock depth and takes an average of 100 to 260 cubic yards of concrete.

The official sources seem unanimous that those are the right numbers; I’ve emailed John Droz, Jr., windpower debunker extraordinaire, for his comments. Will update when he replies!

Mike says:
December 25, 2010 at 9:12 am
So, it was not market forces but government bureaucracy [“the approvals fell through”] that caused Pickens to back off for now. I would think WUWT readers would be appalled and press the government to give Pickens the green light for his enterprise.
So, Mike, you think gov’t approval or regulatory processes wouldn’t or shouldn’t have anything to do with “market forces”, such as the multiple market negatives involving and manifested by the abject failure of wind power in Europe, which also should have been easily predicted from a few wind power basics, but weren’t in the European approval process?
Imo, what is “appalling” is instead the progressive, green thought process, which automatically pursues goals unquestioningly and neurotically as mere fetishes – such as “wind power” and “national health insurance”, “equality” and “justice”,etc., which are fed to the useful throngs by their charismatic leaders as simple, rather undefined memes, but allegedly good in themselves as is – yet nearly totally without regard to what the fetishes actually mean/do in practice here in the real world, which the gov’t permit or regulation process should take account of since it is not supposed to pursue these destructive fetishes – note, in stark contrast to what the EPA is still doing as we speak, that is, without any consideration of the fact that its alleged cure to its alleged Global Warming disease is obviously much worse than its alleged disease.

I’m confused about the first entry posted here. It claims wind turbines have an Energy Returned on Energy Invested of 0.29. I agree that EROEI is a very good metric for determining the worth of any energy generation installation. If it’s less than 1, then such an installation would be an energy sink, not a source. This comment, if true, would be very confusing in a world where private businesses are ramping up production of wind generators.
But a simple Google search finds many detailed studies indicating a very high EROEI of at least 20:
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Energy_return_on_investment_(EROI)_for_wind_energy
These measurements, based on 60 existing installations, indicate that wind power has perhaps the highest EROEI of all types of energy generation installations. There are plenty of problems with wind generation, but complaining about energy return is way off base.

Last week when it was very cold, coal generation provided 47% of UK power and wind provided 0.1% – it may be providing 1.0% currently but that represents a max of 420MW against a total capacity of 2430 MW. Coal is providing 40.6% or 16078 MW.
The daily figures can be found on:
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm .
and the stats are fascinating.

T Boone was all about the subsidies that would have guaranteed him a 50% or better profit margin. Since the election the new congress will be in a less giving mood (lest they be hanged) So T Boone exits this particular stage for now.

1DandyTroll says:
December 25, 2010 at 11:56 am
I’m sorry if you were being rhetorical, but the water, or the water rights if you will, are as financially lucrative, or more so in some places even apparently, than the actual gas.
============================================================
The water rights are going to make him more money than those windmills ever would. He knew that when he started this scam……

Wind generated power also challenges the reliability of the grid. Here’s a presentation by the California ISO:
http://www.caiso.com/docs/2005/03/22/2005032215420815213.pdf
Some issues–
Wind generation varies widely over the day. Page 9 in the above shows a drop in wind generation of a 1000 MW in about 7 hours. Spinning reserves usually pick up the load when this happens. Later in the same day there’s a ramp-up of 800 MW over 6 hours.
Page 10–combine cycle power generation is designed to handle base loads, cutting back on this generation drops the units into less efficient operation–more CO2 per MW produced. If non-operating units have to be brought online to cover the drop in wind generation the costs are very high.
Wind generation is often out of phase with load (page 13). When it is hot it is generally not windy. It is usually not windy during the peak load in the middle of the day.
This presentation is from 2005. I assume improvements in integration have been made, but the fundamental issues remain: we can’t control when it is windy, for every MW of wind you need a MW of conventional, ramping conventional generation up and down reduces efficiency. Demand response, AKA virtual power plants, can play role; pay people or industries to stop using electricity when generation falls off. Economics of demand response got to be interesting.

Erik Ramberg says:
December 25, 2010 at 12:49 pm
“If it’s less than 1, then such an installation would be an energy sink, not a source. This comment, if true, would be very confusing in a world where private businesses are ramping up production of wind generators.”
While i don’t know an objective number for the EROEI of wind turbines, your confusion can easily be clarified: For businesses, EROEI is not important; for them it’s all about simple ROI.

T. Boone Pickens, got lost in the wilderness chasing the wind, and returns with a plan to pass gas.
Will the taxpayer light his fire, again??

He still could sell his windmills to some banana country, of course, after conveniently oiling the gears of some politicians.

Just came by on a very windy day, the Elkhorn wind farm in Telocaset, near North Powder, ok Union, ok La Grande, well, NE Oregon, and before wife and my incredulous
eyes half the farm blades Feathered…
Gee what happens if we really get wind and the lights go out?..

Hmm.. please pardon if this is a duplicate. I thought I posted but it is not showing up.
Someone asked “What happens to Sweetwater Texas now?” (now that the subsidized wind money is going away).
And someone else asked how water rights fit into the picture.
Well, here’s how: you bring in Tenaska to build a
Water-cooled, Coal-Fired power plant of all things.
Coal is mined in East Texas, where there is lots of water, several hundreds of miles away from Sweetwater, which is oil and natural gas country, and dry as a bone. Here’s a map.
So why can’t we have tiny residential wind units that would power individual outlets inside the house? Sort of like the small satellite dishes anchored to our roofs, with their own special “green” outlets that we could plug our toasters and hair dryers into?
If someone can build me one for a couple of hundred dollars, I’ll budget to gradually buy several and even give as gifts.

In the U.S., we have chosen to obfuscate the economic facts of both wind and photovoltaic solar by subsidizing the technologies through back-door subsidies such as tax credits, accelerated depreciation and depletion allowances. Europe has chosen to subsidize entirely on the revenue end of the pipe where the subsidy is plain and clear for all to see. The following is their experience concerning the MINIMUM wholesale power rate required to sustain large-scale wind and solar:
Onshore wind ………. 12-cents(U.S.)/kwh
Offshore wind……….. 20-cents/kwh
Photovoltaic solar….. 40-cents/kwh (This number is a theoretical minimum. Spain and Germany have actually had to pay in excess of 58-cents for 25-year contracts in order to attract developers. Spain has now found it necessary to abdicate some of those contracts as a matter of national economic survival.
The above numbers are “at the plant fence” and do not include fixed utility transmission and distribution costs.
Current average wholesale rate for the current U.S. electric power mix at the trading hubs is around 4.3-cents.
Neither wind nor solar can ever achieve competitive viability because their inherently poor energy density yields outlandish capital costs that no amount of projected fuel savings can be expected to offset.
CH

Not sure if this is redundant, but this is an interesting article that somehow appeared on Huffington Post… leaving some ‘green’ commenters there rather perplexed.
Wind Farm Projects Stalled Over Potential Golden Eagle Slaughter And Other Problems
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/13/ap-enterprise-eagle-conce_n_796096.html

Al Gored says:
December 25, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Having just visited the Huffington Post Green website for the first time, I have a question. Are these people from the same planet as the rest of us?

Al Gored says:
December 25, 2010 at 6:16 pm
“Not sure if this is redundant, but this is an interesting article that somehow appeared on Huffington Post… leaving some ‘green’ commenters there rather perplexed.”
I like this comment at HuffPo, suggesting technical workarounds:
“Slower moving blades reduce mortality, radar is used to detect the approach of migrating birds so turbines can be turned off, […]”
That would be fun to watch.

@Ricard Wakefield
You plan to ‘do something’ about about subsidising wind in Ontario has merit. I also like the phrase above, “Split atoms, not birds.” Thorium-flouride. Yes.

The median household income in 2008 was $52,026, meaning that for every $1 million the government causes to be wasted, we have set ourselves back by the annual income of about 20 families. Given the massive economic distortions involved in wind power, we have been destroying wealth that should be measured by the town and the county.
And all this wind power equipment has been installed without nary a thought to the cost of decommissioning. In a few years, when government’s ability to sustain this fraud will finally be exhausted, the forests of wind machines in some areas will fall into a state of disrepair, and finally, disuse when the cost of repairs is even found to economically unsustainable. This will be some new insult to add to those endured by those who live close to the humming, whirring machines now. Idle eyesores to remind us of past madness.
The left loves to scold the rest of us on the topic of “sustainability”, yet they happily insist that wind power is a “sustainable” source of power. This is yet one more proof of Margaret Thatcher’s quip that socialism is successful until they run out of other people’s money. Sadly, we can no longer afford to entertain or buy of the left by funding their mad schemes. Indeed, their mad schemes now are a threat to our lives and prosperity. It is time for some tough love. Just say no to socialist madness.

@HankHenry
$800,000 for a 2.2 MW wind mill sounds optimistic. So does a 30% capacity factor. Less than 10% is probably more accurate. Use the correct cost and capacity factor and re-do the calculations.
$800,000 per tower might be in the ballpark for the transmission infrastructure cost.

for the US:
Nuclear power-traditional or perhaps Thorium power- on a scale the French are looking to achieve, built on military airbases. A purely electrical infrastructure to run 100% of the cars, etc. Ethanol powered aircraft….
Solar powered dehumidifiers for water………..??

Even these exceedingly high “costs” by KWH are far too low. No maintenance costs are included in these costs, and no one knows either what future maintenance costs will be, or what the useful life of these facilities will be. Having had much experience in things mechanical, and knowing about natural corrosive and erosive factors in the environment, the maintenance costs will be exceedingly high, and the useful lifetime will be much shorter than . . . I have no figures to analyze or compare to, as I have seen no estimates as to what useful lifetimes are anticipated.
Moreover, all of these “renewable” sources have greatly varying output, on a minute to minute basis. There is no effective way to modify supply to meet demand with any of these completely unreliable sources of power. It is difficult to do with steam turbine facilities, such as coal, gas and nuclear power plants, which are very reliable sources of power.
And nothing can be deemed “sustainable” if the real costs can’t be met by all of the users. Plain and simple, we the American people can’t begin to afford the real costs of these fiasco schemes. What is being attempted is sheer folly.
T. Booned Pickens should be referred to as T. Boone “Pocket” Pickens.

The California Energy Commission has reports called: “Comparative Cost of California Central Station Electricity Generation Technologies”. As the name suggests, it gives the relative costs of generation for various technologies–wind, combined cycle gas, etc. They have an empirical model for that takes into account capital costs, fuel costs, maintenance costs, taxes, etc. Tax credits are counted as negative taxes.
Here’s wind compared to advanced combined cycle generation for merchant plants:
2007 (page 17 in the report):
Wind: 99.03 $/MWh (including 12.57 $/MWh tax credit)
Advanced combined cycle: 99.59 $/MWh (including $7.53 $/MWh tax)
Remove the tax credit and you have: 111.53 $/MWh vs. 99.59 $MWh
2009 (page 46 in the report):
Wind: 65.47 $/MWh (31.88 $/MWh tax credit)
Advanced combined cycle: 114.36 $/MWh (8.52 $/MWh taxes)
Without tax credit: 97.35 vs 114.36
The big difference between 2007 and 2009 is the assumed capacity factor for wind. In 2007 it is 34% vs. 42% in 2009. Both seem optimistic and costs are very sensitive to this number. I’ve been looking for some real data on capacity factors for wind turbines. Funny, in the reports they have capacity factor data for conventional generation but none for wind. There’s a lot of fine print in these reports. They will take a very careful read to fully understand. But, some interesting comparisons to the whole range of generation technology.
Here are the 2007 and 2009 reports:
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2007publications/CEC-200-2007-011/CEC-200-2007-011-SD.PDF
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2009publications/CEC-200-2009-017/CEC-200-2009-017-SF.PDF

I’d like to pick up on Wade, Smokey, and Harrywr2’s exchange from yesterday morning, dealing with the economics of residential solar.
I think that such installations are more promising than Wade’s initial calculation, but only for the individual owner, not for the society. As it happens I am in the middle of installing on my own home. Here are my condiderations.
The house is in a favorable area in Azusa CA. American Vision Solar has given a bid of something over $18000 for an installation rated somewhere around 2000 peak watts. They estimate the cost after federal & local incentives at something between 8 and 9 thousand dollars.
My own rough estimate is that the installation will produce as much as 10KWh per day for 300 days a year. Currently, Azusa has a two tiered rate system; the top rate kicks in around 250KWhr per month, and is close to 15c a kilowatt hour. So my rough guesstimate is a savings of 15c x 3000, or $450 a year. Payback in this case would be about 20 years. Smokey will say this is 17 years too long, but I’m not sure I agree. I look at it as a long term investment that pays back 5% a year, tax free.
And that’s at current prices. But there is every reason to believe that prices will rise significantly:
1. Present federal policies practically guarantee significant inflation; the price of everything goes up.
2. Upcoming changes in the auto industry are likely to greatly increase demand for electrical energy.
3. Significant sectors of the environmental movement seek to raise the price of fossil energy to make it competitive with other sources. It appears they may well succeed.
Take these things together, and I expect the price of electricity to double in the next 20 years. Which means that the payback time drops to maybe 10-15 years.
So what’s not to like? Well, the taxpayer gets stuck with 2/3 of the cost, for one thing. And like many other government programs, money is being taken from people of limited means to give to others who can afford to take advantage of the offer.
So, since I disapprove of the whole approach, why am I grabbing it? Simple: My taxes are helping to pay for this. Taking the moral high road just makes me one of the victims.

Tboone saw the tide shifting in 2007/08 he bet on wind , He had a nice pair to draw to a windmill and obama ,he asked for three cards and got cold winters, climategate, and the 2010 elections . Now he is folding because he has nothing and the truth is he does not care about climate and never did. It has always been about money and always will till this myth finally dies and is covered with snow.

Re: Jon says:
December 26, 2010 at 3:49 pm
“The California Energy Commission has reports called: “Comparative Cost of California Central Station Electricity Generation Technologies”. As the name suggests, it gives the relative costs of generation for various technologies–wind, combined cycle gas, etc. They have an empirical model for that takes into account capital costs, fuel costs, maintenance costs, taxes, etc. Tax credits are counted as negative taxes.
Here’s wind compared to advanced combined cycle generation for merchant plants:
2007 (page 17 in the report):
Wind: 99.03 $/MWh (including 12.57 $/MWh tax credit)
Advanced combined cycle: 99.59 $/MWh (including $7.53 $/MWh tax)
Remove the tax credit and you have: 111.53 $/MWh vs. 99.59 $MWh
2009 (page 46 in the report):
Wind: 65.47 $/MWh (31.88 $/MWh tax credit)
Advanced combined cycle: 114.36 $/MWh (8.52 $/MWh taxes)
Without tax credit: 97.35 vs 114.36”
There is something seriously wrong with the quoted numbers. Capital plus fuel costs alone is a relatively simple calculation for CCGT. At current plant and natural gas prices, fuel and capital costs come in just north of $30 per Mwh for the CCGT plant using a 90% capacity factor (existing plants regularly exceed 90%) and a 5% financing rate. Taxes, insurance and O&M expenses add nowhere near the $66 per Mwh needed to achieve the $99.59 figure quoted from the CEC report. In fact, the current generation of CCGT plants come in at under $40 per Mwh.
As to arguments over purported wind capacity factors and operating costs, the European experience is well documented because, unlike the U.S. where costs are obfuscated with “backdoor” subsidies and undocumented operating costs, European countries pay at the plant fence for all to see. The number for onshore wind is $120 (U.S.) per Mwh and for offshore wind is $200 per Mwh.
The grossest figure recently published by W.S.J. for Europe was what Spain and Germany had been paying for photovoltaic solar before they regained their senses; $583.00 per Mwh! When bankrupt Spain pulled back to $400.00 per Mwh, several big operating solar plants went belly-up and hoards more are on the way down. The commercial bankers who financed those plants are screaming bloody murder.
It looks to me as though the California Energy Commission is inventing numbers designed to take California into the same financial abyss where Spain and Portugal now reside.

I live next to one of the largest wind farms in the USA located in the Altamont Pass.
Windmills are beautiful and many people stop to take pictures of them. I’ve never seen a bird killed by one which is not to say it doesn’t happen on a rare occasion. But the fellow doing the research here “Dr. Smallwood” is very questionable in my opinion and I believe his data is seriously made up as a lot of his bird kills happen when the windmills are not spinning during the winter.
That said there are two huge problems with wind. One is total capacity as another poster mentioned. Wind here is very low for nearly 6 months of the year! So there is no battery back up system that is going to work. Wind is very high for 3 months of the year. Two, is short term capacity issues. In fact they do not capture all the available capacity from the wind even when it is available for a couple of reasons like energy surges and synchronization. I’d guess the capacity usage is less than 10 to 15% when averaged for the year.
The Altamont Wind Farms are slowly dying out as the turbines are not being replaced when they fail and a new natural gas generator is being installed near the wind farm.

A field test of British windmills during the cold snap: F A I L E D
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1342032/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-You-dont-need-weatherman-know-way-wind-blows.html

Lets go with what works for a change!
32 of 50 are deemed poultry states. Utilizing poultry waste (which contains pathogens) and food waste (which rot in landfills), heat and electricity can be produced all year, rain or shine, wind blowing or not.
If the power companies do not wish to purchase the electricity just pipeline bio-gas straight to a manufacturer for on site generation of heat and electricity like the landfill gas capture. No fracking, water contamination, or emissions and a good ROI.
I’m ready are you?
http://www.moderntechnologymethods.com/

Pickens had no real interest in wind power. He’s all about pushing natural gas and fracking, always has been. The wind was simply a ploy to lure potential environmentalists and most were too smart to come on board with his plan. We have a home wind turbine, solar water heating and a home heat pump/geothermal heating system, in addition to our wood-burning Swedish stove. We pay little for power. Many months we receive credits for the winter months using our tiny wind generator.
Using alternative energy sources requires more than simple black-white thinking. You don’t expect an efficient gas-powered home furnace to pay for itself in savings over a year, why would you do the same for wind? Wind doesn’t work in all places. It’s not designed as a stand-alone power source, as prairie settlers in my area were well aware. Solar is excellent for water heating in most areas, and can be quite inexpensive. Solar, of course, can’t supply needs for an entire home.
Anyone attacking a power source for a lack of storage, misidentifies the problem. The concept of putting up wires everywhere to transfer electric power is absurd. The most efficient, and inexpensive, use of power is to make it where you use it. Hydrogen fuel cells at the site of municipal offices has done well in our area supplying everything necessary for a fairly large building. Hydrogen fuel cells also operate municipal buses in the Chicago area. It’s not about one-size fits all energy production. Let’s put some folks in charge with the ability to look at the big picture and handle the complex energy demands—as well as fight the monied interests intent on keeping their hands in our pocketbooks.