World's Largest Wind Farm Churns in Texas
FILE- In this Wednesday, March 7, 2012, file photo, Apple CEO Tim Cook announces a new iPad during an Apple announcement in San Francisco. Apple CEO Tim Cook is expected to show off new iPhone software, updated Mac computers and provide more details on future releases of Mac software when he kicks off the company's annual conference for software developers on Monday, June 11, 2012. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma) / Paul Sakuma
The world's largest wind farm officially got up and running Thursday, with all 627 towering wind turbines churning out electricity across 100,000 acres of West Texas farmland.
The Roscoe Wind Complex, which began construction in 2007 and sprawls across four counties near Roscoe, is generating its full capacity of 781.5 megawatts, enough to power 230,000 homes, the German company E.ON Climate and Renewables North America said.
"This is truly sign milestone for us," said Patrick Woodson, the company's chief development officer. "In three years to be able to take this project from cotton fields to the biggest wind farm in the world is something we're very proud of."
The project, which cost more than $1 billion, involved negotiations with 300 landowners and contains a mix of different turbines made by several companies including Mitsubishi, General Electric, and Siemens, writes CNET's Candace Lombardi.
The complex is about 220 miles west of Dallas and 300 miles south of the land where billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens had planned an even larger wind farm before he scrapped the idea in July.
Texas leads the U.S. in wind power production, and this wind farm tops the capacity record of 735.5 megawatts set by another West Texas farm southwest of Abilene.
Renewable energy makes up a small fraction of the electricity grid, but the wind and solar sectors were among the fastest growing in the U.S. before the recession. Wind power in Texas has grown again this year but has slowed from the 2008 rate.
"We are expecting '09 to be a somewhat smaller year overall, but still a fairly solid year," said Kathy Belyeu of the American Wind Energy Association.
At the Roscoe wind farm, the turbines range in size from about 350 feet to 415 feet tall, and they are generally spaced about 900 feet apart, Woodson said. The land is leased, mostly from dryland cotton farmers who continue to work the fields around them, Woodson said. Texas is the leading U.S. producer of cotton, most of it from West Texas.
"It's a use that appears to be quite complimentary," Woodson said. "This whole community was extremely welcoming to us."
E.ON has facilities around the state, but it could be awhile before the company builds more huge wind farms in West Texas because of the glut of wind companies and lack of transmission lines, Woodson said. The state is planning more lines from West Texas to more heavily populated areas, but they won't be completed for at least two more years.
Pickens cited the transmission problem when he bailed out on his planned wind farm. He had already invested $2 billion in 687 turbines when he pulled the plug on the 200,000-acre project.
E.ON is one of the top 10 wind power companies in the world, the company says on its Web site, with operations in the U.S. and Europe.
© 2010 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. The Roscoe Wind Complex, which began construction in 2007 and sprawls across four counties near Roscoe, is generating its full capacity of 781.5 megawatts, enough to power 230,000 homes, the German company E.ON Climate and Renewables North America said.
"This is truly sign milestone for us," said Patrick Woodson, the company's chief development officer. "In three years to be able to take this project from cotton fields to the biggest wind farm in the world is something we're very proud of."
The project, which cost more than $1 billion, involved negotiations with 300 landowners and contains a mix of different turbines made by several companies including Mitsubishi, General Electric, and Siemens, writes CNET's Candace Lombardi.
The complex is about 220 miles west of Dallas and 300 miles south of the land where billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens had planned an even larger wind farm before he scrapped the idea in July.
Texas leads the U.S. in wind power production, and this wind farm tops the capacity record of 735.5 megawatts set by another West Texas farm southwest of Abilene.
Renewable energy makes up a small fraction of the electricity grid, but the wind and solar sectors were among the fastest growing in the U.S. before the recession. Wind power in Texas has grown again this year but has slowed from the 2008 rate.
"We are expecting '09 to be a somewhat smaller year overall, but still a fairly solid year," said Kathy Belyeu of the American Wind Energy Association.
At the Roscoe wind farm, the turbines range in size from about 350 feet to 415 feet tall, and they are generally spaced about 900 feet apart, Woodson said. The land is leased, mostly from dryland cotton farmers who continue to work the fields around them, Woodson said. Texas is the leading U.S. producer of cotton, most of it from West Texas.
"It's a use that appears to be quite complimentary," Woodson said. "This whole community was extremely welcoming to us."
E.ON has facilities around the state, but it could be awhile before the company builds more huge wind farms in West Texas because of the glut of wind companies and lack of transmission lines, Woodson said. The state is planning more lines from West Texas to more heavily populated areas, but they won't be completed for at least two more years.
Pickens cited the transmission problem when he bailed out on his planned wind farm. He had already invested $2 billion in 687 turbines when he pulled the plug on the 200,000-acre project.
E.ON is one of the top 10 wind power companies in the world, the company says on its Web site, with operations in the U.S. and Europe.
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Now nuclear power plants are the way to go. Had we not given in to the hysteria over radiation decades ago we?d already be energy independent. For the uneducated, coal burning produces several orders of magnitude more radioactive waste than the equivalent nuclear reactor not to mention the fact that a coal plant spews the radiation into the atmosphere in stark contrast to a nuclear power plant which spews forth ?.. nothing.
Additionally, people have been misinformed as to the volume of radioactive waste produced by a nuclear reactor. If processed correctly, a nuclear reactor produces about a shot glass full of waste in a given year. That?s all folks.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574376543308399048.html
NO MORE WINDMILLS!!!
If you want to store the energy for later use, you can do pumped hydro, CAES, molten salt or any number of methods. With natural gas combined cycle, biomethane, geothermal, solar, wind and other methods, we can provide energy without using fossil fuels. Use renewable and save the fossil fuels for later.
Ya gotta walk the walk.