To the extent that this article criticizes Pickens' plan, find. But the charge that he's only looking out for himself is a bit lame. On one hand, if Pickens doesn't spend a dime to build wind power turbines, people will say, "why don't you put your money where your mouth is." Yet when he has massive investment in the wind turbine scheme, people say he's just looking out for his investment.

Which is it? Does he believe in his plan enough to pour millions into it? Or is his plan just an advertisement for Big Pickens Incorporated?

Look at the plan, not the man. If it won't work, then so be it.

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Solar Solar Solar!

If everyone had their own solar-electric (wind is solar too) system, no transmission lines would be necessary. Although it would be difficult for all of us to go off grid, the more the better. If we could reduce oil and gas consumption with a solar plan at each home/business, just maybe we could put a dent in the oil imports, Nuke power and a dent in opportunists (T-Bone. . .uh....Boone)wallets.

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because Pickens will make a shit load of money if the project goes forward?
He's a billionaire already, he could just sit back and sell that natural gas he owns direct to the power stations and reap the profits, instead he's making a suggestion that could help wean us off of foreign oil and give us a longer lead in time to a future without gasoline fuelled vehicles.
The R&D (mainly by foreign manufacturers) for alternative powered (fuel cell, hi-power battery, solar, etc)vehicles will pay dividends but in the interim Pickens has advanced a "do-able"way of keeping our homes warm or cool and our transport on the roads, don't be too cynical about it.

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is still a carbon-based fuel.

Where is the solution?

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http://science-community.sciam.com/
blog-entry/Dan-Ms-Blog/
Cost-Solar-Power/300005422

The Cost of Solar Power   From Dan M.'s Blog  
by Dan M.
"One source that seems good is solarbuzz.com(1)(2). From the
name, it sounds like a pro solar energy source, but the data seem
to be realistic.
From the first referenced page at this site, we see that residential
costs have dropped 6% to 37.59 cents/kwH, while
commercial/wholesale costs have dropped 0.6% between July
2000 and November 2007 to 21.37 cents/kwH. "
"For comparison purposes, the wholesale price of electricity was
0.06 cents/kwH. "

Dividing the solar cost by the wholesale grid price, we see that
solar power costs 356.2 to 626.5 times as much as electricity from
the wholesale grid. That is during the daytime. At night, the
cost of solar power is much higher because you have to add the
cost of energy storage, the cost of converting the energy to store
it, the cost of converting the energy back, and all of the
inefficiencies. You would be lucky to get 5% efficiency overall
for stored energy, so multiply by at least 20 purely because of
inefficiency. Double or multiply by some larger number the
capital cost to cover the cost of storage. Solar power is
unaffordable at night.

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A modest house has 200 amps times 115 volts = 23 kilowatts of
electricity connected to it. That would be a house selling for
$150,000 where I live or about $1 Million in Silicon Valley. A 4-
kilowatt solar photovoltaic system costs about $34,000 according
to http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment
/2007-08-26-solar_N.htm.
23 kw divided by 4 kw = 5.75
So to get the required 23 kw we need $34,000 times 5.75.
$34,000 times 5.75 =$195,500
The same source also says: "Like wind power, solar energy is
spotty, working at full capacity an average 20% to 30% of the
time."
To be safe, take the 20% which equals 1/5 th of the time, so we
need 5 times as many solar panels to provide a whole day's worth
of energy. If you include off-peak, the 4 KW is reduced. Then
there are cloudy days, etc. $195,500/(1/5) = $977,500. Now we
see that we really need $977,500 worth of solar panels for our
$150,000 house. But I didn't include batteries, control system,
inverter, transformer, installation cost, building permit, the angle
of the sun at my latitude, energy lost in the batteries and
transistors, perhaps rotating the roof to continually face the sun,
etc. Did I do the computation wrong? Perhaps, but what I came
up with is that just solar panels raised the price of my $150,000
house to $1,127,500. If solar panels were subsidized by the
government, you would have to pay the same price, but you would
pay part of it as taxes.

Let's look at the Roof Area Covered: Solar energy from straight
up doesn't happen here, but if it did, the total solar energy onto 1
square yard is about 1 kilowatt. Solar cells are 16% efficient
according to the source above at the present time. We get 160
watts per square yard from our solar cells if the sun is at right
angles to the solar panel. We need 23 kw. 23kw divided by 160
watts/square yard = 143.75 square yards = 1293.75 square feet.
So if the sun is directly overhead of our solar panels, we need
1293.75 square feet of them. That would be 40 feet by 32.34
feet. But the sun is not directly overhead. Guess an angle. The
sine of 45 degrees is about .7. Dividing the 32.34 feet by 0.7 I
get 46.2 feet. So the solar cells cover the whole roof. The whole
roof has to slant southward at the right angle to catch the most
sunlight at winter solstice, or the whole roof has to rotate to follow
the sun. The average house is designed wrong for a rotating roof
that slants in only one direction.


Another source
http://www.wind-works.org/articles/costofiraqwarandwind.html
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=34245
http://www.wind-works.org/bio.html
says that solar costs $10 Million/megawatt and wind costs $2
Million/Mw. That is greatly different from the prices above.
Paul Gipe also says solar works 1000 hours per year and wind
works 2000 hours per year. Since 1 year = 8766 hours, you have
to multiply the solar cost by 8.766 and the wind cost by 4.383 to
get a whole year's worth of energy. So solar really costs $87.66
Million per megawatt and wind really costs $8.766 Million per
megawatt not counting the cost of storing energy and the energy
lost in storage. Since energy conversions are inefficient, having
to convert and store the energy may multiply your costs by 10.

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Downloaded from:
http://www.alternet.org/environment/54682/?page=5

"Health, hazard, and quality of life near wind power
installations How Close is Too Close?
Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD*
March 1, 2005
A nacelle (generator and gearbox) weighing up to 60 tons
atop a 265 ft. metal tower, equipped with 135 ft. blades, is a
significant hazard to people, livestock, buildings, and traffic
within a radius equal to the height of the structure (400 ft)
and beyond. In Germany in 2003, in high storm winds, the
brakes on a wind turbine failed and the blades spun out of
control. A blade struck the tower and the entire nacelle flew
off the tower. The blades and other parts landed as far as
1650 ft (0.31 mile) from the base of the tower (Note that all
turbines discussed in this article are "upwind," three-bladed,
industrial-sized turbines. "Downwind" turbines have not
been built since the 1980's.) Given the date, this turbine
was probably smaller than the ones proposed for current
construction, and thus could not throw pieces as far. This
distance is nearly identical to calculations of ice throw from
turbines with 100 ft blades rotating 20 times per minute
(1680 ft)"

And the above is only the so-called tip of the iceberg. If
interested, just google "dangers of wind turbines" - there's
plenty of sites to choose from to learn about the dangers.
The noise alone is inescapable - like water torture.

I watched the 3 YouTube films, "Voices of Tug Hill", and
it's appalling. Greed has no boundaries, no conscience, no
morals, no standards"

No source of energy is risk free, but the poverty caused
by not having energy is a really big killer.

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Wind energy requires that Direct Current [DC] be transmitted
over enormous areas [more than one continent] to provide
continuous power because wind varies from minute to minute.
Direct current is required because the voltage and frequency of
AC would change minute by minute with wind speed. Long
distance DC transmission requires superconducting cable. DC
just doesn't go far otherwise.
Reference:
http://www.terrawatts.com: Liquid nitrogen is still required.
http://www.alternet.org/environment/69888

Following the http://www.terrawatts.com lead, you arrive at the
statement that the "high temperature" superconductor will be
cooled by liquid nitrogen. See:
http://www.azom.com/details.asp?
ArticleID=942#_When_will_HTS
The need for liquid nitrogen or liquid helium is the Achilles heal
of this scheme. It isn't really a "room" temperature
superconductor. Any accidental warming brings the grid to a
halt. Energy is required to make liquid nitrogen. Dry nitrogen
must be cooled to 77 degrees Kelvin to make it a liquid. [Zero
degrees Kelvin is absolute zero, -273.15 degrees Centigrade.]
Liquid helium is at 4 degrees Kelvin or colder. Superconduction
usually means a requirement for liquid helium. Liquid Helium is
very expensive. The cable has to be thermally insulated and
cooled its entire length. The cable also must be physically
separated into "out" and "return" wires, and the force between the
2 wires will be large. As stated in the article I gave you the URL
of, it won't be cheap.

Any warming above the superconducting temperature or too much
magnetic field will cause the cable to quit superconducting at that
point. The cable will instantly melt, creating an electric arc. All
of the energy that was flowing through that spot will instead be
dumped there, creating an explosion. The power grid will be
disabled for some time since repairing a superconducting cable is
not as easy as splicing a wire. Is this the kind of electric service
you really want? We really don't have the technology yet.

What about storing wind energy as compressed air? Check the
efficiency, the availability of leak proof caverns, etc. Storing
wind energy as compressed air is a pie in the sky. What about
storing wind energy in batteries? We can't make that many
batteries. Another pie in the sky.

Wind energy wastes energy because the wind varies so much that
a "spinning reserve" is required in most locations. If you are
running the steam powered generator at the spinning reserve rate,
you may as well use the steam as your energy source and forget
about the wind. Wind turbines are decorations, not sources of
energy for the grid until we have room temperature
superconductors. There are special locations and circumstances
where wind energy is useful, but wind cannot replace coal and
nuclear any time soon. Nuclear power is the only kind that can
actually take coal fired power plants off line. If allowed to
compete, nuclear power would already have replaced coal fired
power because nuclear is 30% cheaper and 24000 American lives
per year safer.

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