Cost Estimates of T. Boone’s Colossal Wind Farm Keep Rising
T. Boone Pickens, the oil-baron-turned-wind-power-wildcatter, keeps bumping up the estimated cost of the world’s largest wind farm, which he’s building in Texas. Pickens tells the Living On Earth radio show that the whole 4,000 megawatt wind project, including the cost of building his own transmission lines, will cost a bloomin’ $12 billion. He’s already put in an order for at least $2 billion worth of wind turbines from GE, which is enough to power 300,000 homes (the completed wind farm is estimated to power 1.3 million homes).
Back in April, he told the Guardian the project would cost $10 billion (likely before he added transmission line costs), and admitted to them that that size and cost was “mind boggling.” And that’s up from just last September, when he told the Wall Street Journal that the project would cost $6 billion.
So, why the rising price tag? The price of building wind farms has been going up as the cost of the raw materials to build the turbines, as well as demand for turbines themselves, have been lifting the upfront costs. And the costs of building Texas’ transmission lines, which wind farms need to bring the power to the people, are proving expensive, too. Texas could spend anywhere between $2.95 billion and $6.38 billion on laying new lines, according to a recent report.
Pickens is willing to spend another $2 billion on building transmission lines for his massive wind farm, instead of waiting for the state or a utility to build them. He just can’t wait for slow-moving third parties to hold him back. In true Pickens style he explains his reasoning to Living on Earth:
So to fit the schedule of when we’re gonna be ready to start spinning, which will be the last of 2011, we need to have transmission in place at that time, and this is the only way we can time it to work that way. And, see, everything has gotta happen fast for me, because I’m 80 years old.
Gotta love that.
Photo courtesy of wikimedia
wow! why so much, this is not good to provide incentives for others to do it.
Notice the exorbitant costs to build totally unreliable power generators: Dominion is building a 1600 MW nuclear plant in Virginia : estimated cost : $4,000
per kilowatt. Pickens is building these useless windturbines (T.Boone don’t understand that “nuklare stuff”) and spending at least $4,000 per kilowatt. But those are rated, not actual, capacities, which in the case of the nuclear plant would be about the same, since nuclear plants typically operate above 95% of their rated capacity, but wind operates anywhere from 18% to 37% of its capacity. Typically 25% would be close, so the actual
cost per generated kilowatt is closer to $16,000 for
wind power. But nuclear plants last 60 years, at least twice as long as a windmill, making the proper comparison figure for wind closer to $32,000 per kilowatt (for 60 yeasr). But that’s not the end of the excessive wind costs : wind cannot meet peak demand needs and so we must build new , controllable plants every year when our demand increases 2%. Thus wind power must be duplicated, making its comparative costs even greater. It’s obvious that the global wind industry and it environmentalist shills are defrauding the public
when they make their preposterously misleading ecomonic arguments. Wind costs a bundle, and produces small amounts of unreliable, unpredictable power , mostly when its not needed.
Tom – since most of your comment sounds like a Rush Rehash – perhaps you might offer up some engineering sources to back it up?
The cost per KW of the Bush administration’s foray into clean coal – $6,500. FutureGen’s budget is up to $1.8 billion for the construction of a 275 MW power plant. Nevermind the future costs of sourcing coal, paying miners, transportation of coal, maintenance of complex systems (and the fact that you STILL have to get rid of mercury and toxins in the fly ash)…how much does additional wind cost?
The key difference in the total costs of wind and nuclear is that folks who are proponents of nuclear do not figure the costs of the nuclear waste storage. What about the costs of building nuclear waste storage?
Regarding providing power “mostly when its not needed” wind power is most available during the day. Isn’t that when it is needed?
Also, regarding nuclear, I have not seen any costs associated with security issues or with clean up such three-mile island.
Please do write if you have factual numbers for any of these costs. I am looking for cradle to cradle costs.
Thanks.
What seems to get lost in the discussion is cost per operating KW. As a consumer my main concern is cost per KW, proponents of different sources of green energy seem to want to minimize that. If you have 100,000 people or better on energy assistance at current rates, how many would you have if you drove power prices up 20%? Most low income people are working and don’t want assistance from the government. In my state I see upper income people such as university professors advocating for green power, but they can afford it. It’s also wise to consider WHAT’S IN IT FOR PICKENS. Living in a northern state keeping warm can be expensive?
In the US, nuclear waste disposal costs are built into the rates (as part of operating/liscensing costs the plant is charged by the NRC). NRC also has charges for security, inspections, etc. This is why operations costs are a bit higher than other fuel sources, but this is balance by low cost for fuel, which is also much much less volatile than gas, coal and petroluem. Per nuclearInfo.com the disposal cost works out to be ~0.2 cents /kWh.
I flew over picken’s wind farm near pampa, Tx.
None of the turbines were turning. Weather was calm for a couple of days.
Yeah, Pickens’ turbines were not turning. In the meantime, our nuclear power plant was shut down due to abnormalities and we still have no place to safely store the radioactive waste for 500,000 years, the climate is destabilizing faster than they thought, with irreversible damage and you are putting down wind power???
As a country, we Americans should spend massive amounts of our taxpayer dollars to eliminate coal energy production completely. Even though we have over a hundred years of reserves and unfavorable emissions are gradually reducing.
Maybe we should focus entirely on geothermal energy, except the construction cost are high per kwh, and the good sites tend to be in remote areas we should not spoil.
Let’s move completely to solar panels and cover or shade large swaths of land. But then we would have to engineer huge battery capacity for overnight demand.
Maybe we should just raise wind turbines, but we still need the batteries and watch out for flying ice and shattered blades.
That leaves nuclear, biomass, hydro, natural gas and others with their own unique benefits and drawbacks.
The point here is that they ALL have their place to help us meet our growing energy demands. What we really need is the methodology to put these new, cleaner, and renewable electrons into our cars so we can stop exporting trillions of dollars each year to maintain our crude oil addiction
Any update on this project?
This stuff is crazy. Wind generated power runs about 30 cents a kWatt and Solar about 50 cents. Compare this to all other generating sources at about 8 cents. WE WILL PAY FOR THIS difference in our bills, and WHY? AND it gets worse. Wind only blows about 1/3 of the time, then what do we do? Solar is good for about 1/2 the time AT BEST. The insanity continues. Last night I saw a PBS story where people were working on ways to store wind and solar power for when the wind does not blow and the sun does nto shine. How much will that add to the cost of a KW? Insane.
This is one hundred percent stupidity and political.
There is ZERO reason for any of this. Ok, you believe in global warming. Let’s take a step back. HELLO!!!! Nuclear power produces ZERO carbon and costs 6 to 8 cents per KW. HELLO!
Stop the insanity.
And if you worry about nuclear waste, which is also silly, but ok; look into nuclear power generated from Thorium.