Chinese To Supply 600 MW Wind Farm In Texas 453
Hugh Pickens sends in a Wall Street Journal report that Chinese banks will provide $1.5B to a consortium of Chinese and American companies to build a 600-megawatt wind farm in West Texas, using turbines made in China. The wind farm will be built on 36,000 acres, and will use 240 2.5-megawatt turbines, providing enough power to meet the electrical needs of around 150,000 American homes. The project will be the first instance of a Chinese manufacturer exporting wind turbines to the United States. China aims to be the front-runner in wind- and solar-power generation "The Obama administration is hoping a shift to renewable energy will inject new life into the US manufacturing base and provide high-paying jobs, making up for losses in other sectors. But while the US has poured money into renewable energy through tax credits and other subsidies, China has positioned itself to reap many of the benefits by ramping up its export machine."
Re:We can't even compete for THIS!? (Score:3, Informative)
The blades might be hard to transport but the summary says the Chinese are making the turbines, not the blades.
Re:How is that sustainable? (Score:5, Informative)
Same thing the U.S. gained when it rebuilt Europe - a place to sell goods. In this case it's Chinese turbines so they get jobs, and we get poorer.
Re:How is that sustainable? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Level Playing Field? (Score:5, Informative)
With approximately 1 ton of rare earth magnets in each turbine, and China having dominance in the rare earth supply chain, and threatening to cut off all exports of rare earth oxides (hmmm, build your factory in China and China will let you have access to the REO), with no EPA or greenies to stymie the mining industry, I'm failing to see where this field is level.
Rare earth magnets are not the only way to build efficient turbines. This summary [terramagnetica.com] of this article (PDF, p.26) [magneticsmagazine.com] does a good job of showing why your statement is probably false.
Re:I'm a treehugger but... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How is that sustainable? (Score:5, Informative)
Remember that 240 wind turbines spread across 36,000 acres does not *use* 36,000 acres - not anywhere near it. Every wind energy corporation I've worked with allows farmers to farm right up to within 10 meters of the turbine tower base. The wires are almost universally all run underground with these new wind farms. The actual footprint of the turbine tower base with the 10 meters of safety space, is less than 1/2 of 1 acres. 240 towers will use an area around 120 acres. The remaining 35,880 acres will still be prime viable agricultural space. In the meantime, the typical turbine lease involves payments to the landowner of approx. $10,000 per year per turbine on their property. That means if you have a farm that is 1000 acres and have suitable space for 10 turbines, you'll lose about 5 acres of your growing space, but be paid around $100,000 a year. The loss of 5 acres of crop space may see something in the order of $5000 in lost revenue from the growing space.
The farmer comes out $95,000 a year ahead - that just might keep their farm operating when otherwise economics might say they couldn't. Also, note that for every MWh of power generated by a wind turbine, that's typically 1220 pounds of CO2 emissions avoided from traditional power generating plants (coal, gas, oil, etc.) - a 600Mw farm running at 25% capacity for a 20 year life span generates 26,280 GWh of power - potentially keeping 16 million tons of CO2 out of the environment.
Re:How is that sustainable? (Score:5, Informative)
Of a typical wind deployment, over 90% of the land is usable for farming, and 75% for housing, however, these things are usually placed where housing is unwanted as wind turbines to create some noise polition and are an eyesore. The Texas site chosen is virtually unpopulated. (and few expect it to ever be given the climate and terrain and high wind). Other sites like down mountainsides are basically considdered useless for anything else as you can't live there and can't farm therte, and they make ideal wind farms.
In contracts; the Savana River nuclear site, for example, is a 198,000 acre site, of which 24,000 acres is used for the nuclear plant and secured from the public. another 18,900 acres is set aside for ecological study of the effect of the nuclear faciltiy. This facility is closed, and not generating power, but at its peak didn't make over 1.5GW.
The Hartsville SC plant (robinson), is a 5,000 acre site generating about 715MW at peak, but that includes nearly 200MW of non-nuclear power sources used as backups. The reactor peak output is barely above 500, and rareley above half that. Their "primary" unit is actually a coal fire plant.
This of course does not include the massive land necessary for the creation and storage of nuclear fuel, nor its waste...
nuclear power is also about 5 times the cost per GW, so it's more land, more expensive, more dangerous, and more politically charged (go on, TRY to get a permit for a new nuclear plant...)
Re:We can't even compete for THIS!? (Score:3, Informative)
TFA stated this was a Chinease/American company based in the USA making the turbines... They will not be imported cheap chinease crap, they'll be made right here by American families (using China's money, much of which will stay here in our economy instead of theirs).
I bought a nice new Chevy a few years ago, and a Chrysler 2 years later. One was manufactured in Canada, the other in Mexico. The Honda, Subaru, and Kia we've also bought over the years were all made in America, with over 80% of manufacture and assembly taking place on american soil...
How big is 36,000 acres? (Score:3, Informative)
To put this into perspective:
36,000 acres = 7.5 x 7.5 miles = 12.5 x 12.5 kilometers = the size of Walt Disney World
Source:
Convert 36000 acres to square miles [wolframalpha.com]
Re:$10,000 a house (Score:3, Informative)
No, sounds low...
considering only a 40 year generator lifespan, that's only $20/month to generate the power for a house. The transmission lines in the localized grids already exist, and this deployment includes the cost of the superconductor line to connect the new farm into the texas grid (and Obama is fronting the money under a seperate effort to tie the texas grid into the other 2 national grids on the north side of the state using the same tehcnology).
Granted, about 50% of your monthly power bill is maintenance and facility costs for the power compnay, but ifg my bill averages $100, and $50 is maintenance, they're profiting $30/month/home for 150,000 homes... That's AMAZING profitability...
The only issue is overproduction of the energy (read about this issue at DotyEnergy.com, and the solution they have that not only fixes a major cost issue for windfarm deveolopers, it also solves out oil import problems and greenhouse gas output from motor vehicles, an NO, it;s not vaporware, it's technology in active use since WWII).
Re:How is that sustainable? (Score:5, Informative)
WHY DON'T WE GET SOME DAMN POWER LINES FIRST!!!!
Very good question. It's so good ERCOT [ercot.com] asked it themselves and the first fruits of that discussion [renewableenergyworld.com] have already started coming on line [lonestar-t...ission.com]. The problem is construction of those new lines will take time and the growth spurt of West Texas Wind the last few years has overwhelmed [smartgridnews.com] the existing grid.
Disclaimer: I work for Nextera Energy Resources [nexteraene...ources.com] (formerly FPL Energy)
Re:Argh! (Score:2, Informative)
Cut back regulation. Reduce entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. Eliminate mandated employer health care. The US isn't grossly uncompetitive, but there will be a tough few decade period when China's standard of living catches up with the current (year 2009) standard of living in the US. It's reasonable to cut back on the socialist crap until there's no serious labor competition out there any more.
If anyone had any doubts as to whether or not capitalism and free market economics were literally insane, evil disasters of ideas, let the quoted text reassure you.
Re:How is that sustainable? (Score:5, Informative)
This article really explains it: http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_13655311 [denverpost.com]
The largest wind turbine manufacturer in the world, Vestas, has just built a plant in Colorado and is building a second. However, due to the credit crisis they are having a harder time selling turbines worldwide since its difficult for customers to get financing.
The reason the project in Texas is going forward is because one of the few countries in the world that is still in a good position to finance, China, is willing to do so with the obvious catch that he must use Chinese turbines.
I think once the credit market improves US-built turbines will be more attractive for other projects. The reason Vestas is building the two plants in Colorado is because there are many skilled laborers there that cost less to employ than similar ones in Europe (a Vestas plant over there was closed due to the creation of the new plants in Colorado).
To Pickens' credit, he tried hard for years to get financing for this project, but if he was to get this thing going while he was still alive this was probably the only way for him to proceed. I think it's still a smart move and hopefully will lead to similar projects in other states. If his project succeeds it should make it easier for other companies to get domestic financing so won't be forced to purchase Chinese turbines in the future.
Re:Capacity Factor (Score:3, Informative)
Read the article here : http://www.politicsinthepub.org.au/downloads/BP16_BaseLoadFallacy.pdf [politicsinthepub.org.au] "Although a single wind turbine is indeed intermittent, this is not generally true of a system of several wind farms, separated by several hundred kilometres and experiencing different wind regimes." and here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power [wikipedia.org] "A series of detailed modelling studies which looked at the Europe wide adoption of renewable energy and interlinking power grids using HVDC cables, indicates that the entire power usage could come from renewables, with 70% total energy from wind at the same sort of costs or lower than at present. Intermittency would be dealt with, according to this model, by a combination of geographic dispersion to de-link weather system effects, and the ability of HVDC to shift power from windy areas to non-windy areas."
essentially, what's said here is that geographical dispersion can easily cope with the intermitency problem. (I can imagine the [total amount of moving air] * [avg wind speed] = constant.)