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:How is that sustainable? (Score:5, Insightful)
China is taking the lead (Score:4, Insightful)
What with all the rest of the cheap Chinese shit we Americans buy every day, what's the big deal with buying some more cheap shit to generate our electricity?
Hey, cheaper turbines making cheap electricity. We're preserving the American Way of Life.
The US should control the technolog (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope that the Chinese exports to the US do not mean the USA loses all control of the technology behind the venture.
Who knows...the Chinese could well end up controlling everything we rely on. This could be a backdoor entry!
We can't even compete for THIS!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Come ON people! Get it together!
Capacity Factor (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The US should control the technolog (Score:4, Insightful)
Just like when US exporters give out their technology to their buyers so they can control the technology.
You know, a good test of whether an idea like yours really is reasonable is to simply reverse the terms in your mind, and ask yourself, in this case: "self, if the US was exporting turbines to China, would I be fine with giving them the know-how and have China control the technology?"
If, in your mind, it does sound reasonable, then it quite possibly is. If not, then it's not.
Re:How is that sustainable? (Score:4, Insightful)
Which part of $1.5B isn't beneficial? Their banks collect interest and their manufacturers make sales.
Meanwhile, 36K acres to power 150K homes? Doesn't a nice nuclear plant only need 100 acres or so to provide power that same number?
Re:Argh! (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right, of course.
Losing manufacturing to China is probably the largest problem we face as a country. Especially in fields of advanced manufacturing, it is strategically important to maintain a strong lead in the U.S.
Some have said that we are moving away from a foundation of manufacturing and towards one of information management and service-oriented business. This is a truly horrifying prospect as both depend on a constant influx of *manufacturing* jobs to create demand for these new industries. Losing manufacturing to other countries means losing independence and self-sufficiency. We can't clean each other's pools forever.
The other problem, though, is that China can undercut our labor by a huge amount. It used to be that the Japanese were saying Americans were lazy and overpaid. It took the Chinese and Indians to prove it. So even if we were to begin another "Buy American" program, we would still be at a disadvantage to overseas customers who would simply choose the cheaper Chinese products over the expensive American products.
We are in a race to the bottom, and if we are to pull ourselves out of this death spiral it will be necessary to look to other failed states for examples of what not to do. No empire in its death throes has ever been able to save itself. England is doing a good job of coming back, but their once vast empire is now just a small collection of rainy islands in the North Atlantic.
"using turbines made in China" (Score:2, Insightful)
...using turbines made in China...
Sigh...I knew the artificial inequities in trade - that is, the artificial difference in the cost of living and thus the wages you can get away with paying, the artificial differences in the cost of regulation, and the way the Chinese manipulate their currency to ensure they maintain a preeminent trade position - would result in the much-ballyhooed "green jobs" going to China.
Am I the only person in America who sees a horribly bleak future for our children because of inequitable free trade and trickle-down economics? The latter only encourages our top economic tier to seek the margins the former provides, eliminating patriotism (and ethics, morality, honor, and even the public displays of religion - but that is another rant entirely) from the equation.
Unless something changes, I don't think America has anywhere to go but down...for 90% of us, anyway.
Traded for missile technology (Score:3, Insightful)
We give them information about missile technology they give us information on wind mills.
Sounds fair to me.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/15/inside-the-ring-2059116/ [washingtontimes.com]
Re:Confessions of an (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary is wrong.
It should say China is lending *another 1.5 billion on top of the 1400 billion they've already loaned us for bailouts - just like Mr. Potter did in It's A Wonderful Life. First loan the money, then raise the interest, then take over.
Re:How is that sustainable? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"using turbines made in China" (Score:3, Insightful)
It makes sense, actually (Score:5, Insightful)
They're suppressing competition by undercutting prices. This is easy to do if you've got a low cost labor pool and government backing (both overt in the form of subsidies and covert in the form of silent ownership by senior Chinese government officials). All the better that you can seek (and probably get) tax breaks from the government of the very country who's industry you're looking to hobble with your low prices.
That said, there's nothing wrong with buying Chinese generators if they meet quality and price requirements. But I think this is a case where the US government has lost sight of the football here. Assisting a foreign power with the task of gutting an industry that was pioneered in the US and that may be important in future green energy markets around the world seems extremely foolish and short sighted.
Re:China is taking the lead (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a difference between buying cheap Chinese shit at the dime store and buying high-profile technology from them. Oh, the shame...
Oh great, more cheap junk! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Confessions of an (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait a minute... You can arbitrarily raise the interest rate on Treasury Notes!? Woo hoo! I'm gonna buy a whole mess of 'em and raise the rate to 3,000%, compounded minutely! Suck it, Uncle Sam!
For all the Californians, wonder why TX? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, it's because a developer in Texas can just buy the land and build a wind farm.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/weekinreview/18galbraith.html?_r=3 [nytimes.com]
The irony is quite telling -- environmental regulations making it harder to build a renewable energy source. The most telling part of this (and recall that the New York Times was not a particular fan of this TX governor):
That is, measured purely by results, the track record of the state that doesn't give a shit is miles ahead of the state that makes a big complicated deal about caring.
[ Aside: I'm not against environmental regulation by any means. At the very minimum, however, we ought to insist that the benefits a cleaner environment outweigh the costs of regulation. In cases like this where it seems like the regulations are actually counterproductive to the goals, well then the costs are truly wasted.]
Re:China is taking the lead (Score:5, Insightful)
> Hey, cheaper turbines making cheap electricity. We're preserving the
> American Way of Life.
No, we don't. At least when you look beyond tomorrow morning. If all we can
afford is cheap and ever more cheaper, our standard of living will eventually
be just that: cheap crap. While in the meantime the Chinese raise theirs, have
better and more quality products and can afford it easily.
The Chinese are incredibly clever...they produce everything 'for cheap' just
as we idiots want them to in our penny-wise, pound-foolish attitude. We give
them our precious fruits of 'research and development' to produce the actual
products. So even if they produce at a loss, it's a huge
win-win-win-win-win-etc situation for them. They practically leapfrog over
what took our economy years and decades to develop.
For every factory producing goods according to our blueprints is one shadow
factory a few miles further, producing the same exact item minus the
brand-name. That will then be sold across all of Asia, including the 'chinese
market' our western capitalists like to salivate over, for half the price than
the identical 'original' item. In the end they not only got the know-how for
free, but also manufacturing methods, perhaps even the machines to produce and
then make money at the end with their own copies while our business has to
fold as it can't compete by any margin at least on their asian market.
That they sell turbines of all things to us should be shaking us to the core!
Re:Argh! (Score:5, Insightful)
First, losing parts of manufacturing to nations that free trade and have free money is NOT an issue. The money values change and then things will straighten up. China is not doing that. They have their money pegged to ours AND have trade barriers against the vast majority of goods.
Second, this deal is going through FINANCED MOSTLY BY AMERICAN AND TEXAN GOV. The Chinese got in on a small amount of financing on this.
Third, the Chinese plants are WELL KNOWN FOR BEING HORRIBLE. THey break down ALL THE TIME. There are American made plants that are great quality. Likewise, multiple companies out of EU as well. Sadly, GE makes theirs in China. But these 3rd party parts are PURE JUNK.
Not "Baseline" generating capacity. (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is, with electricity generation you have something known as "baseline demand" which you can think of as a water table or the level of the sea a low tide.
You absolutely HAVE to have this generating capacity 24/365, no if's, but's or maybe's.
The problem with wind (and solar, and wave, etc) is that generating capacity can be anywhere from zero on up, if there is no wind, or even just light winds, generating capacity is effectively zero.
What this means is that if you are an electricity grid planner, it doesn't matter how much theoretical wind turbine generating capacity you have, NONE of it is applicable to your baseline demand.
This means the only things that you can use for baseline demand are coal powered, oil powered, nuke powered or hydro powered "traditional" generating stations.
The nature of "traditional" power stations is such that like the car doing 60mph down the freeway, there is a fair bit more power on tap, 24/365, so in fact, due to the nature of grid demand, by definition, the "traditional" power stations that are REQUIRED to meet baseline capacity can, in 99.9% of cases, ALSO supply peak demand (think of this as high tide).
So, the ONLY thing you can use wind power for, assuming the wind is blowing, is peak demand.
Now that you can only use it for peak demand, and given that you have an electrical grid, the only time you will ACTUALLY use one power source over another is if one is CHEAPER per giga-watt-hour than another.
Fact is, wind power loses out here too, UNLESS you heavily subsidise it, and that is no longer a level playing field.
The grid itself is also a problem, although a high tension grid can transfer useful power 1,000 miles, when you start talking about reasonable losses and efficiency in the grid, you are down to 250 miles, so it is not like you can put offshore wind farms *here* and connect them via the grid to a demand *here* 1,200 miles away, even with the wind power subsidies, it still does not make economic sense.
All you have to remember, is this.
The purpose of a wind turbine manufacturer is to sell wind turbines.
They really could not care one way or another if the installed turbines make economic sense on a level playing field.
Re:China is taking the lead (Score:1, Insightful)
I know - someone else has already pointed out the difference between dollar store items and proper Chinese industry, but your special sort of bigotry deserves the full smackdown:
Cheap 'Chinese shit' like every Apple product you buy? Like your TV? Your computer?
Folly (Score:5, Insightful)
This is another great example of why giving money or tax breaks to the biggest corporations is no longer a winning strategy to promote job growth. The multi-national corps have a world-wide market to pull labor from and are only forced to buy local labor for a few on-site jobs. This is why I believe they should stop ALL money going to huge multi-national corps (who have their own R&D money anyway) and focus on getting micro-loans to smaller businesses who can't offshore their work as easily. Start preferring the little guy trying to start something on a local corner by his house instead of a corporation that really has no home or loyalty whatsoever.
I thought Obama wasn't going to fall into this trap of giving money to huge corps who are simply going buy cheap foreign labor. I guess I was wrong.
Re:The question on my mind is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the country of whiners. Everyone here in the U.S. is all for solving problems unless it is going to inconvenience them for a half second.
Re:How is that sustainable? (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in west Texas, and I would have been one of the first posters here on my phone if I hadn't been about to get a root canal. Yes it sucked, but that's beside the point.
WHY DON'T WE GET SOME DAMN POWER LINES FIRST!!!! I am so sick of driving around seeing all these turbines just sitting there idle on windy days because we don't have the transmission lines to get the energy out of here. Amarillo is like the third windiest city in the united states (and no Chicago isn't above us). Funny thing is informed people here know that wind power isn't our cure all, it's just a political football, and we it at the moment.
1. We don't have transmission lines
2. Even here we have calm days
3. T Boone is like the most despised person in West Texas. There are what I think to be a lot of conspiracy theories about him here about him trying to steal all of our water, and using wind power as a conduit to do that. There is some anecdotal evidence to support the conspiracy theories, so it's hard to say that they are 100 percent false. What I do believe to be true is that he wants wind power to be huge because he could sell a crap ton of natural gas to generate electricity when the wind isn't blowing.
Re:"making sure you are part of the 10%" (Score:2, Insightful)
Then I would suggest making sure you are part of the 10%
Me, I'm American in the sense that I view the American people to be my people.
I think it is wrong for some to exploit absolutely artificial differences nation to nation in the cost of the essentials of survival - food, housing, medical care, utilities - by transplanting their manufacturing plants and service centers to those cheaper nations so that they can pay lower wages vis-a-vis America's solely to further enrich themselves faster than they could in America.
That costs America jobs and is bringing great harm to my fellow Americans. Further, I would expect the average citizen of all nations to have precisely the same perspective regarding protecting their fellow countrymen.
But it is not the "average" citizen of any country who is being so tremendously enriched by inequitable free trade, now is it?
I have a difficult time accepting that I should seek to be "among the 10%" and take joy in counting my riches while watching my fellow Americans slide into poverty. I may not be religious, but I still don't believe in abusing my fellow human beings just to satiate my greed.
Re:Confessions of an (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't just arbitrarily change the rates but, if you're big enough, you can set yourself up so that your borrower is completely dependent on your line of credit to maintain their lifestyle. Then (assuming that your lifestyle isn't somehow mutually dependent on the lifestyle of the entity borrowing from you), you can stop loaning them $$ unless they agree to higher rates.
If China wasn't still largely dependent on us being gluttons, they would probably like to cut us off altogether.
This move, however, seems to be mutually beneficial. We get stronger through renewable power (although I'd still rather see nukes than wind) and they get $$ and a chance to sell hardware. Seems like a good move all the way around.
Re:How is that sustainable? (Score:2, Insightful)
Repeat after me:
There is not a fixed amount of wealth in the world.
China getting richer doesn't automatically mean that the US gets poorer.
Re:China is taking the lead (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not entirely true. You're partially right that, for Wal-Mart fodder, the vendor just says "Make something that looks like this as cheaply as possible." So, naturally, they supply crap that Wal-Mart can sell very inexpensively and their customers can use for 3 months and send to a landfill.
However, even when specs say "We need this to last for 1000 years" or "We need baby formula - Poison-free, please", the Chinese are some of the worst offenders about using counterfeit goods. Using under-rated bolts and chains has been a major hassle for us. We've bought stuff with strict specs and have had failures under use that should have been well within the capabilities of the equipment. Fortunately (so far) the field failures haven't been catastrophic, but determining the cause of the failures is enormously expensive. They save a few bucks by using sub-standard steel and we spend thousands tracking down the cause of failure to "This isn't a 2000 lb load chain - It's failing at 1200 lbs." That also means that (now) when we buy stuff from Chinese vendors we have to do acceptance QA testing that would be redundant if we were buying from a more reputable source.
So, in short, the Chinese do not always "build judiciously to spec".
Right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is that sustainable? (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought a lot of this push by the Obama administration et al was to put US citizen to work and boost OUR economy, not China...why is our government not pushing for all aspects of the alternative energy initiatives they are promoting to be done in the US? Where are the tax credits and incentives to US companies (established and especially startups) for developing and manufacturing in the US and employing US citizens? During the election campaigns, I recall hearing that the move to clean/green energy sources wasn't JUST for the health of the environment, but also for generating new jobs and industries for the US.
I know China technically owns a lot of the US at this time, but, c'mon no one has been annexed yet, and this is not helping US citizens as much as home grown/developed/manufactured solutions would be...
Re:Capacity Factor (Score:3, Insightful)
"Wind and solar are both geared to address peak. "
Bullshit - they aren't "geared" toward anything. Wind and solar don't work like that - the grid operators cannot simply turn on the wind or the sun. And that level of control is necessary for how we run our grid presently. Baseline is always on, and peak is on when dictated by demand, NOT availability. Solar is an especially good example of this - peak generating hours in many parts of the country occur in early evening in the summer, as people get home from work, turn on lights, cook, and the AC labors to take care of the load. But that's when your solar generation is going down. So you still need to fire up peaking plants to meet demand.
I'm not saying that wind and solar don't have their place, only that they don't drop as neatly into the electrical supply system as some would wish.
Re:The question on my mind is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Years ago I saw a documentary about a village on the Russian-Chinese border. The Russian farmers all were sitting around in the local bar all day drinking vodka and bitching about the Chinese traders making more money than they did. It never occurred to them that they could make the same amount of money if they were willing to actually work 14 hours a day in their own small business.
The Russians had 70 years of communism as an excuse for not knowing about making your own way in the world without expecting a handout. I wonder what excuse people in the US have.
Re:Problem is, this is NOT just America (Score:3, Insightful)
In what way is that fair?
Well, from the viewpoint of world markets: if the Chinese entrepreneur can do the job better and cheaper, why should I (as a hypothetical third party) buy gizmos from the EU/US? Just because Americans are per se more worthy of a job than a Chinese person with the same skills?
From the viewpoint of the EU/US: The Chinese pay a rather high price for "sucking our jeerbs" with a cheap currency. In order to keep their currency low, they hold trillions in treasury bills, (1) foregoing better returns in other assets, (2) risking their investment in case of USD inflation or USD devaluation, (3) keeping their people worse-off, as imports are more expensive than they would be otherwise, so they have to use crappy Chinese gizmos and eat crappy Chinese food even if they don't want to.
Re:How is that sustainable? (Score:2, Insightful)
Which part of $1.5B isn't beneficial? Their banks collect interest and their manufacturers make sales.
Meanwhile, 36K acres to power 150K homes? Doesn't a nice nuclear plant only need 100 acres or so to provide power that same number?
In you nuclear plant scenario are they mining and refining the necessary materials to power that plant on that 100 acres as well? What about the coolant?
Re:How is that sustainable? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because we're idiots. Energy production is the next real economic driver, and whoever can produce it will become the next oil-rich nation. The US needs to focus on how to solve its own energy needs and how to sell energy to the rest of the world, which is only going to become more and more hungry for it. Moreover, it needs a geographically unique solution to energy production in order to compete, because technology, information, and talent are geographically independent in the 21st century. We have a lot of land, so solar and wind seem like something we can do that a lot of other people can't. Whatever we end up doing, if the US doesn't start producing something of value soon, it will quickly become the most irrelevant first-world nation on the planet (at least while it remains first-world). This absurd idea that we can sell our amazing business and financial management services to the rest of the world forever is going to kill us just as soon they realize that we aren't especially good at it.
Re:What does Mr. Horse think? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The US should control the technolog (Score:2, Insightful)
Windturbines are hightech products. They seem so easy, but they are not.
1.) the blades
- these are aerodynamic blades
- they are CFD and FEM-caculated
- they are physically tested
- validating caculations with measurements
The technology and engineering knowledge that goes into the blade design is a highly protected secret to each manufacturer.
2.) the power train
- varying loads, from varying directions
- multipiple stress for the main bearing(s)
- dynamical simulated powertrains
- gear boxes with weights from 20 to 70 metric tons
- nacelle masses up to 500 metric tons,
- rotor masses up to 100 metric tons
- flexible blades up to 60 meters and above
made of fiber and carbon composite material
3.) generator, operation & control
- computers and sensor networks measuring with high resolution on the grid side and adjusting the powergeneration to grid spikes and lows
and try to dampen torque spikes on the power train.
Response times within sub 5ms .. for big rotating inertiamass.
Grid complaince, grid safety, load reduction.
4.) hub heights 80 meters and above
5.) rated power from 1 Megawatt up to 6 Megawatts
Wind turbines are highly engineered products, .. they fail.
and if they are not
The higher the rated power of those turbines goes
the more engineering effort has to be taken.
Btw. on the engineering side the U.S.
are head to head with european researchers, and engineers
http://wind.nrel.gov/designcodes/ [nrel.gov]
http://www.ge.com/ [ge.com]
Re:Right. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yet I know over a dozen people born without said silver spoon, who found a way to go to college anyhow.
You get off your ass and work and study. If that means 18 hour days and no weekends, and living without the latest game or phone or other status symbol - so be it. America promises opportunity, not iPods.
That seems to be pretty much the way it's always been - it's only in the last forty odd years that people have gotten this strange idea that everyone can have everything they want and nobody has to be cold, or hungry, or poor, or even exert themselves to change their own lives.