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."
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.
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".
> 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!
I hope that the Chinese exports to the US do not mean the USA loses all control of the technology behind the venture.
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.
The door is open on a level playing field for American companies to design and manufacture wind farm turbines. The fault for why this did not happen lies within America. You want the USA to 'control' the technology? Control in the 21st century comes from innovation and first mover advantage.
I personally don't have a problem with where the turbines come from. Borders don't mean a whole lot to me and cheap, clean energy is social justice.
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.
There is only one US company making Megawatt class wind turbines. Almost all the high quality Megawatt class units in the world come from Europe, where there has been an emphasis on research and progress on sustainable energy. The US has voluntarily stepped out of the field since the progress made in the 1980's. Deregulation of the utilities and the lack of Government incentives has killed this industry, not foreign competition. You cannot have the technological lead in alternate energy without government support.
I thought those huge blades were very difficult to manufacture and transport. I know for something this expensive they can customize a barge and do something special at the port, but I'm surprised this didn't give local producers an edge. And while I considered myself knowledgeable about the waking dragon, I'm somewhat surprised that they have the manufacturing chops to produce something this "high tech". I guess it's another feather in their hat that their businessmen can arrange this sort of deal. With Texas no less.
Wages are cents in the dollar. Working conditions are as cheap and unsafe as they can get. Wind turbines due to low manufacturing numbers have a high labor content as such, there is no way reasonable or acceptable way for US labor to compete and if they could of course the whole exercise becomes utterly pointless as they could not afford to pay the electricity generated killing the investment.
As long as government continue down the path of blind, deaf and dumb monkeys and don't accept the need to establi
...where the hell are they going to put them? I'm sitting here in West Texas in an office of a major tower manufacturer; and we have 80 towers worth of sections sitting in our storage lot (which is being expanded) that the company purchasing them can't find a home for. A couple of sites have been proposed, but they fell through because it would cost too much to build the infrastructure to connect them to the grid. Now they're trying to find a site in a different state. And Mr. Pickens reportedly has 200 towers built that he can't site either, my favorite quote is "Well I damn sure can't put 'em up in my yard".
So good luck to the Chinese I guess. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
I don't know, but every time I drive out to West Texas on I-10, I see trucks carrying windmill parts, and I see more windmills on the plateaus visible from the highway. So somebody is finding places to put them. Or already owns suitable places and is occupying them over time. Maybe that's who the Chinese are selling to, and that's why that land isn't an available choice for your customer? I don't know.
I hate how articles talking about renewable energy never take into account the capacity factor of the production. Wind is about 30% or so, so the real average output will be more like 200 MW, unlike a nuclear or other plant with a capacity factor of 90+%. Yet still, they will be compared on their MAX output, not the AVERAGE.
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.
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):
But here again, Texas and California have behaved very differently. Texas set a strong renewable energy requirement back in 1999 (when George W. Bush was governor) -- and quickly exceeded it. Last year, 5 percent of the state's electricity came from wind power. California set a very high bar, requiring big utilities to get 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources next year, although they are not expected to meet it.
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.]
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think one of the larger questions should be, why the fuck aren't we manufacturing these things in the US??
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...
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.
I suggest they use an 8x8 grid pattern as the basic city layout. Then, you can put a 20MW turbine in each corner and power all the houses within each block. The turbines themselves only take up a single block, so you still get 60 blocks of high density residential zoning with no pollution at all.
The alternative (and better choice) is to terraform a small area away from the city. By raising the level of the land and encouraging waterfalls, you can build a very efficient hydroelectric power farm that generates no pollution and never breaks down.
Nuclear fission has its related pollution problems. Fusion plants don't last longer than 50 years. Wind power is pretty inefficient as far as power generation goes. But Hydroelectric is built to last and has a great price/output ratio over the life of the plant.
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?
Yes but there's a big difference in how those acres are occupied. One is sparsely occupied by the windmill towers, the other is a field of impermeable ground cover.
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.
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...)
China would likely benefit in repair parts and maintenance related costs. Once the components for these turbines are in place, you're not likely to just switch them out for some other manufacturer.
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.
You can't compete ; China is willing to allow it's workforce to get treated like crap.
About the only thing that you can do is raise import tariffs to the point where domestic product looks like a good deal - but this isn't going to happen because of the enormous power bloc that's founded on the profits of yoking the global labour pool. "Globalization" is an odd term... some people perceive it as the homogenizing of consumer culture on a global scale but the man behind the curtain is the army of low-paid workers required to support it.
The only real solution that avoids the endless spiral of the labour pool further into poverty is to wind back the clock and live by bartering products locally, which mitigates the imbalances caused by regional labour cost differences at the cost of reintroducing the imbalances caused by geographical differences in local wealth and losing the inherent efficiencies of a global economy. Then you just get the poor people invading you for your resources.. and go around the spiral again.
So another kind of globalization might work ; if similar goods were available everywhere for the same cost, everyone would have a similar standard of living, but the only way that's going to happen is if you have both energy and manufacturing technologies..
That everyone can use
That are acceptable everywhere
That use commonly available resources
That use only minimal amounts of rare resources
That produce enough energy to meet comfortable needs
Which means no dirty manufacturing plants, no dirty energy production, no detrimental working conditions. If you follow this spiral you end up with robot factories (who wants to work - it's detrimental to [my enjoyment | my payroll budget]), producing 100% recyclable consumer goods to order from clean or recycled materials with no unrecoverable by-products, powered by fusion (with a good PR campaign), or solar, or whatever people will tolerate in their back yard. At which point you're either socialists or a human zoo kept for the amusement of a few immortal plutocrats, because there will be no need for humans to do labour work for anything other than recreational purposes (or used as a means to keep the population under control - work or starve... hmmm, sounds familiar).
Nope.
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.
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.
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!
Then I would suggest making sure you are part of the 10%. For all the other asinine problems running around here, we do have a tremendous amount of upward mobility. There is a huge portion of that 90% that believes that they should be able to whine loud enough and someone else will come fix their problems in some fashion. Government handouts, corporate charity, whatever. Then on the top end, there is a bunch of worthless dead weight always waiting to be replaced. These are the guys with more money than
Because "making sure you're in the top 10%" is something you have total control over. It's not like the circumstances of your birth could possibly have anything to do with it. Here's a news flash: some substantial portion of the US wasn't born with silver spoons in their mouth. Their parents don't have enough money to send them to college, and in the absence of "government bailouts", it's all but impossible to afford to go on your own. How are people in this situation supposed to just make sure there in the top 10%? To say nothing of the fact that the top 10% is, well 10%. So you're perfectly ok with the idea that 90% of the population is going to spiral into poverty. Nice.
That land can be used simultaneously for other things, like a farm. OR, We could accomplish the same thing with one (fairly small by modern standards) nuclear power plant AND use much less land. Your choice. Either is fine by me.
Efficency? Would you like fries with that? Cows can graze on the land the turbines sit on. There's a turbine smack-dab in the middle of a Wal*Mart parking lot two towns north of me. Turbines are fenced off with 100x100' fences, but other than that the 20 acres of "wind land" they use is up for grabs for agriculture, hunting lodges, parking lots etc.
*HUGH* Pickens? (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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...
Parent
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".
Parent
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!
Parent
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!
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.
Parent
Re:The US should control the technolog (Score:5, Interesting)
I personally don't have a problem with where the turbines come from. Borders don't mean a whole lot to me and cheap, clean energy is social justice.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The US should control the technolog (Score:4, Interesting)
There is only one US company making Megawatt class wind turbines. Almost all the high quality Megawatt class units in the world come from Europe, where there has been an emphasis on research and progress on sustainable energy. The US has voluntarily stepped out of the field since the progress made in the 1980's. Deregulation of the utilities and the lack of Government incentives has killed this industry, not foreign competition. You cannot have the technological lead in alternate energy without government support.
Parent
We can't even compete for THIS!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Come ON people! Get it together!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The blades might be hard to transport but the summary says the Chinese are making the turbines, not the blades.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Wages are cents in the dollar. Working conditions are as cheap and unsafe as they can get. Wind turbines due to low manufacturing numbers have a high labor content as such, there is no way reasonable or acceptable way for US labor to compete and if they could of course the whole exercise becomes utterly pointless as they could not afford to pay the electricity generated killing the investment.
As long as government continue down the path of blind, deaf and dumb monkeys and don't accept the need to establi
The question on my mind is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The question on my mind is... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know, but every time I drive out to West Texas on I-10, I see trucks carrying windmill parts, and I see more windmills on the plateaus visible from the highway. So somebody is finding places to put them. Or already owns suitable places and is occupying them over time. Maybe that's who the Chinese are selling to, and that's why that land isn't an available choice for your customer? I don't know.
Parent
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.
Parent
What does Mr. Horse think? (Score:5, Funny)
"No sir, I don't like it!"
Capacity Factor (Score:5, 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.
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.]
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.
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:How is that sustainable? (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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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)
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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...
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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.
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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?
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Re:How is that sustainable? (Score:5, Funny)
I suggest they use an 8x8 grid pattern as the basic city layout. Then, you can put a 20MW turbine in each corner and power all the houses within each block. The turbines themselves only take up a single block, so you still get 60 blocks of high density residential zoning with no pollution at all.
The alternative (and better choice) is to terraform a small area away from the city. By raising the level of the land and encouraging waterfalls, you can build a very efficient hydroelectric power farm that generates no pollution and never breaks down.
Nuclear fission has its related pollution problems. Fusion plants don't last longer than 50 years. Wind power is pretty inefficient as far as power generation goes. But Hydroelectric is built to last and has a great price/output ratio over the life of the plant.
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Re:How is that sustainable? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:How is that sustainable? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Yes but there's a big difference in how those acres are occupied. One is sparsely occupied by the windmill towers, the other is a field of impermeable ground cover.
Just saying. More nuke plants too please.
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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.
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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...)
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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.
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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: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How is that sustainable? (Score:4, Funny)
They are ferocious giants!!!
Sancho! Give me my lance!
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
China would likely benefit in repair parts and maintenance related costs. Once the components for these turbines are in place, you're not likely to just switch them out for some other manufacturer.
Re:How is that sustainable? (Score:4, Interesting)
Hopefully they can shame the USA into taking some 'retaliatory' action.
Fingers crossed.
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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.
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Re:Argh! (Score:4, Interesting)
You can't compete ; China is willing to allow it's workforce to get treated like crap.
About the only thing that you can do is raise import tariffs to the point where domestic product looks like a good deal - but this isn't going to happen because of the enormous power bloc that's founded on the profits of yoking the global labour pool. "Globalization" is an odd term... some people perceive it as the homogenizing of consumer culture on a global scale but the man behind the curtain is the army of low-paid workers required to support it.
The only real solution that avoids the endless spiral of the labour pool further into poverty is to wind back the clock and live by bartering products locally, which mitigates the imbalances caused by regional labour cost differences at the cost of reintroducing the imbalances caused by geographical differences in local wealth and losing the inherent efficiencies of a global economy. Then you just get the poor people invading you for your resources.. and go around the spiral again.
So another kind of globalization might work ; if similar goods were available everywhere for the same cost, everyone would have a similar standard of living, but the only way that's going to happen is if you have both energy and manufacturing technologies ..
Which means no dirty manufacturing plants, no dirty energy production, no detrimental working conditions. If you follow this spiral you end up with robot factories (who wants to work - it's detrimental to [my enjoyment | my payroll budget]), producing 100% recyclable consumer goods to order from clean or recycled materials with no unrecoverable by-products, powered by fusion (with a good PR campaign), or solar, or whatever people will tolerate in their back yard. At which point you're either socialists or a human zoo kept for the amusement of a few immortal plutocrats, because there will be no need for humans to do labour work for anything other than recreational purposes (or used as a means to keep the population under control - work or starve... hmmm, sounds familiar).
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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.
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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.
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Re: (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!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Right. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I'm a treehugger but... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:I'm a treehugger but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Efficency? Would you like fries with that? Cows can graze on the land the turbines sit on. There's a turbine smack-dab in the middle of a Wal*Mart parking lot two towns north of me. Turbines are fenced off with 100x100' fences, but other than that the 20 acres of "wind land" they use is up for grabs for agriculture, hunting lodges, parking lots etc.
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