Sustainable Energy Transitioner

T. Boone Pickens is announcing an order of 667 GE wind turbines today to power the first phase of his planned world’s largest wind farm. Currently, the largest wind farm is ~750 MW, called Horse Hallow elsewhere in Texas. The first phase of his project will already break the record at 1,000 MW (1 GW), and he plans for the whole project to produce 4 GW by 2014. Pickens’ farm is located in the wind-rich Texas panhandle whose rural residents don’t consume much electricity. So, a challenge for the project, as well as many others throughout the country, is how to finance the transmission lines to population centers within the region. Pickens is reportedly considering privately financing the transmission if the state’s Public Utility Commission doesn’t do so.

This type of project scales up wind from the realm of small, local distributed generation to rival large fossil fuel-powered plants that can provide for metropolitan areas. And it keeps Texas in its leadership position among states of more than twice the wind generation of its closest competitor, California.

Texas’ leadership shows the vast potential for wind power growth nationally. At over 5 GW, the state produces almost one third of all wind power in the country, yet four other states have similar potential wind resources: North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Kansas. As long as we set up the transmission infrastructure necessary, these top five states can be significant wind electricity exporters to their neighbor states.

One difficulty that the wind industry is facing is that of rising costs, due to higher steel, concrete, and other materials costs. After falling to as low as $1,150/kW in 2003, recent turbine installation costs per kW have averaged ~$1,700 (Chupka & Basheda, September 2007). But its competitors in natural gas, coal, and nuclear power generation are also facing swift increases in their construction costs. And of course wind has the free fuel provided on-site by Mother Nature -- while natural gas, coal, and uranium have to be mined and transported and have all been climbing substantially in cost over the last several years. Thus, wind power seems poised to become the major source of new electricity for many parts of our country.

Its great to see a billionaire who talks the talk of peak oil awareness also walk the walk of moving the sustainable energy transition forward.