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Uncanny Pompadour
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- T. Boone Pickens has scuttled plans for a giant wind farm in Texas, partly out of difficulty with building transmission lines, the latest sign that efforts to rebuild the nation's electrical infrastructure have been marked by fits and starts.
Hurdles faced by the billionaire financier include lower natural-gas prices, which made power from wind less desirable as an alternative to gas-fired electric plants.
Financing is also tough to get nowadays, as alternative energy developers await key moves in Washington on tax breaks, renewable portfolio standards, and other programs.
He unveiled his plan a year ago against a backdrop of record-high oil and gas prices. He set his sights on building as much as 4,000 megawatts of wind power in Pampa, Texas -- an amount equivalent to the electricity made by four nuclear-power plants. [SIZE=10pt](Correction: Not to be overly pedantic, but four nuclear UNITS, quite possibly at one plant) [/SIZE]
Pickens now plans to build five or six smaller wind farms in the Midwest and possibly Texas, according to published reports on Tuesday.
Another big stumbling block facing Pickens and others is a lack of transmission lines.
At first Pickens proposed building his own lines, but didn't follow through. "It was a little more complicated than we thought," Pickens told the Dallas Morning News. [SIZE=10pt](BWAHAHAHA, YEAH NO SHIITAKE, SHERLOCKE!)[/SIZE]
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/pickens-s...wind-farm-plans
[SIZE=10pt] Good idea...Economically unfeasible. Tough to build a football field that reaches from OK to PA without some complications. [/SIZE]
Hurdles faced by the billionaire financier include lower natural-gas prices, which made power from wind less desirable as an alternative to gas-fired electric plants.
Financing is also tough to get nowadays, as alternative energy developers await key moves in Washington on tax breaks, renewable portfolio standards, and other programs.
He unveiled his plan a year ago against a backdrop of record-high oil and gas prices. He set his sights on building as much as 4,000 megawatts of wind power in Pampa, Texas -- an amount equivalent to the electricity made by four nuclear-power plants. [SIZE=10pt](Correction: Not to be overly pedantic, but four nuclear UNITS, quite possibly at one plant) [/SIZE]
Pickens now plans to build five or six smaller wind farms in the Midwest and possibly Texas, according to published reports on Tuesday.
Another big stumbling block facing Pickens and others is a lack of transmission lines.
At first Pickens proposed building his own lines, but didn't follow through. "It was a little more complicated than we thought," Pickens told the Dallas Morning News. [SIZE=10pt](BWAHAHAHA, YEAH NO SHIITAKE, SHERLOCKE!)[/SIZE]
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/pickens-s...wind-farm-plans
[SIZE=10pt] Good idea...Economically unfeasible. Tough to build a football field that reaches from OK to PA without some complications. [/SIZE]