Here's the Energy Future 2008-05-15

CLOates
16 May 2008
Norman, OK, USA

Here's the Energy Future

A fellow Amarillo High School grad., T. Boone Pickens, understands where our energy future lies, even if he did go to college at OSU. He's investing two gigabucks now--and probably three or four times that eventually--to build a giant wind farm in Roberts County and adjacent counties, near the city of Pampa in the Texas Panhandle.

Getting these projects going now, not ten years from now, depends on continuing the two cent per kilowatt hour federal tax credit that's due to expire (again!) in December. Will we never learn to subsidize what's important to our future (renewable energy resources that WE control) and quit subsidizing what's been important in our past (fossil fuels, particularly oil, that we USED to control 40 years ago)?

Do we as a nation LIKE depending on increasingly expensive energy from unreliable sources? Evidently the current U.S. Congress and President Bush do. See my previous rant, "Disgusting!" in the blog entries below.

To investigate Boon Pickens' wind power project and Texas wind power further, see the Web articles below.

Enjoy your next trip to the gas station, not to mention your August electricity bill!

Prof. Oates


BTW, Pickens' project is near Pampa, TX, not near Abilene and Sweetwater, as CNN is reporting. (The Abilene-Sweetwater area is the site of the largest EXISTING wind farm in Texas.) CNN's credibility is somewhat suspect on this story anyway, since they're also editorializing in side comments that wind power is impractical because the wind turbines break down all the time. Believe me, OG&E does not operate wind farms out of altruism, and they don't continue to build them because they're unprofitable or unreliable, even in storm-prone Oklahoma. The wind farms' biggest problem is that the most favorable wind conditions occur in places that are far from the existing main power grid lines. It costs a bundle to build the feeder lines required to connect to the main grid, and that's why the subsidies are required. Once the power line infrastructure is built, the power generated is cheaper than the power generated at coal- and natural gas-fired plants. Ask the OG&E customers who signed up to pay a little extra to support wind power. They're now paying less than OG&E's regular customers, and people are on waiting lists a mile long to get their electricity on OG&E's wind power program. --CLO


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24654895/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19231397/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Texas

http://www.seco.cpa.state.tx.us/re_wind.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_from_Amarillo,_Texas
?? For some reason, I am not included in the above article, but Pickens is! :^)