Houston — Plans for the world’s largest wind farm in the Texas panhandle have been scrapped, energy baron T. Boone Pickens said Tuesday, and he’s looking for a home for 687 giant wind turbines.
Pickens has already ordered the turbines, which can stand 400 feet tall — taller than most 30-story buildings.
“When I start receiving those turbines, I’ve got to ... like I said, my garage won’t hold them,” the legendary Texas oilman said. “They’ve got to go someplace.”
Pickens’ company Mesa Power ordered the turbines from General Electric Co. — a $2 billion investment — a little more than a year ago. Pickens said he has leases on about 200,000 acres in Texas that were planned for the project, and he might place some of the turbines there, but he’s also looking for smaller wind projects to participate in. He said he’s looking at potential sites in the Midwest, including Kansas, and Canada.
In Texas, the problem lies in getting power from the proposed site in the panhandle to a distribution system, Pickens said in an interview with The Associated Press in New York. He’d hoped to build his own transmission lines but he said there were technical problems.
Wind power is a big part of the “Pickens Plan,” which was announced a year ago today. Pickens has spent $60 million crisscrossing the country and buying advertising in an effort to reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign oil.
“It doesn’t mean that wind is dead,” said Pickens, who runs the Dallas-based energy investment fund BP Capital. “It just means we got a little bit too quick off the blocks.”
Pickens announced in 2007 plans to install the turbines in parts of four Texas panhandle counties.
He had hoped to complete the four-phase project in 2014 and eventually have 4,000 megawatts of capacity, enough to power more than 1 million homes. The total cost was expected to approach
$12 billion.
Renewable energy provides a small fraction of electricity used today, but the wind and solar sectors are the fastest growing in the U.S. In 2008, the U.S. became the world’s leading provider of wind power.
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kansasmutt (anonymous) says…
Heck Yea T ,Bring em to Kansas.I would love to see them out in the flinthills pumpin out power . Maybe they can replace KPL and bring our cost down some. Owh i forgot, Corp america is too greedy to allow us to save a buck.
kansasmutt (anonymous) says…
I will.Would you loan me your phone marion ? I cant pay my bill due to KPL raising my electrical rates.My phones a paperweight now. Note* I would take socializam over the republicans ways any day of the week.
snap_pop_no_crackle (anonymous) says…
Oh, hey, "ratbrain" must have been on today's page of the Words for Unpleasant Older Folks calendar.
prospector (anonymous) says…
Half of the turbines sitting on I-70 west of Salina are idle because the grid there does not have the capacity yet.
As for saving money Kansasmutt, don't look for utility relief. Bottom line, wind costs 15 cent/KW hour and coal costs 4 cents.
toe (anonymous) says…
Put them on the college campuses in the State.
pace (anonymous) says…
Put marion on a hill, his mouth pointing to the wind farm, lots of otherwise useless hot air finally put to productive use. Brownback could chat on that hill too and finally do some real good for someone else than himself. I do appreciate Picken's efforts, he is a doer. I get pretty sick of the wingnuts saying there is no way out of the fix they put us in. economic, health, environmental, Blaming the democrats for not fixing it in less than a year. It will take a lot more than a democratic party, or a leader to fix this up. We are all going to have to work and all make a few changes. The oil/coal only solution, not exactly proactive. Their plan, to just continue to use oil and coal and that with the sure knowledge we will pay more and more for it, how to finance that plan, pass the environmental cost to the general public, the people lower on the food chain, plus pass the new built oil and coal infrastructure to future generations, that plan sounds a little short sighted. I don't want to leave my kid's with a steadily polluting world and one where the uninsured, unemployed, family option is to go fight another war in another countries oil field. I would like to hear more practical solutions, less whining, from the wingnuts.