T. Boone Pickens has dropped his much-ballyhooed plan, chronicled in our pages, to build the world's largest wind farm, in favor of a handful of smaller wind farms scattered around the Midwest.
He cites many of the same factors that are leading lots of people to take a closer look at the microgrid, small, local, renewable energy installations, instead of behemoth installations: the difficulty in getting financing and the cost of building transmission lines out to the middle of nowhere (Pickens was hoping the state of Texas would foot the bill, but it turns out they're spending $5 billion to build lines elsewhere). The economics of major renewables projects are harder than ever to rationalize with the volatile price of oil; smaller-scale projects mean lower risk.
[Via Green Inc.]
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Related Stories: | Topics:Innovation, Technology, Design, Ethonomics, T.Boone Pickens, oil, Wind Farm, microgrid, biodiversity, environment, Green, Sustainable, Science and Technology, Technology, Energy Technology, Alternative Energy Technology, T. Boone Pickens |
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Recent Comments | 1 Total
July 13, 2009 at 2:31am by ben dee
At least it hasn't been scraped all together. Obviously the worlds biggest wind farm in Texas would have bee a missive help in building momentum. Scattered wind farms scattered around the midwest is a start.
Sometimes you need to take a risk and I think in this situation the Texas government should have take a risk. Smaller scale projects may mean lower risks, but they also mean lower rewards.
Ben from the windmill power at home hub.