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For many years the Kiowa Indians freely roamed throughout the panhandle of Texas up through the panhandle of Oklahoma and on into south central Kansas. The tall grass prairie was good to them. It fed their horses. The buffalo numbered in the tens of thousands and provided food, leather for clothes and blankets for wintertime. The water was pure and they drank freely without fear of giardia or any other contamination. The sun shone brightly as there was no manmade air pollution. Only an occasional tornado. The wind blew continually -- sometimes from the southerly direction -- and in the winter it blew reliably from a northerly direction. Life was good and the Kiowa's flourished for many years.
These nomadic warriors originated in the Montana/Wyoming area in the early 1800s. They gradually migrated southward due to the proliferation of buffalo and good grazing for their horses. This led to conflicts and ultimately ferocious battles with warring Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians. A peace treaty in Medicine Lodge, Kansas, in 1867 committed them to the reservation in Oklahoma.
Little did they know that a short 150 years later big business would beat a pathway to their doorstep. Big business. Wind power. And in a big way. Large windmill towers, some as high as a 48-storey building, are springing up all over this area, commonly referred to as the Wind Belt.
According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the U.S. installed 8,358 megawatts (MW) of new generating capacity (enough to serve more than 2 million homes) in 2008. This led to an investment of $17 billion channeling newfound funds for the economy and creating thousands of jobs. From an environmental standpoint, this is equal to nearly 44 million tons of carbon emissions, the equivalent of taking more than seven million cars off the road.
If you drive from Abilene, Texas, to Amarillo and on to Guymon, Oklahoma, and then to Dodge City, Kansas, you will have been through the heart of the wind corridor. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Boulder, Colorado, has mapped the wind speed across the nation since 1994. They have identified class 4 winds (up to 16.8 mph) at a height of 164 feet in a strip 100 miles wide and 400 miles long through the Texas panhandle, Oklahoma and into southwest Kansas.
The U.S. Department of Energy recently released a report projecting that wind power could provide 20 percent of U.S electricity by 2030. To reach this target, wind turbine installations would have to increase to 7,000 per year by 2017. To put that in perspective, 2007 saw just 3,100 new wind turbines in all of the U S. Massive installations are on the way. Make no mistake. And potential profits are also massive.
The land of towering giants
T. Boone Pickens calls the wind play in west Texas "The Big Kahuna". He wants to build the biggest wind farm in Gray, Roberts, Hemphill and Wheeler counties in Texas, a $10 billion deal. He could put up as many as 2,000 wind turbines on nearly 200,000 acres. He's talking about generating 2,000 to 4,000 megawatts of electricity, roughly the equivalent to one or two Comanche Peak nuclear power plants.
Texas has shown the way in wind power. Texas is still the No. 1 wind power in the U.S., far eclipsing California, thanks partly to legislation that George W. Bush signed as governor in 1999 to establish a goal of 2,000 MW renewable energy capacity by 2009. Texas is well ahead of this goal and is capable of producing more than 4,300 MW. Texas' current goal of 10,000 MW by 2025 is also doable. According to the American Wind Energy Association, Texas is now home to four of the nation's five largest wind farms. In 2005 Vestas installed the nation's largest wind farm near Sweetwater, Texas. This mammoth wind farm generates 736 MW and is operated by NextEra Energy Resources.
The wind blows almost all of the time in west Texas. It's part of the landscape. In the summer the hot, swirling winds drive the heat index up over 100 degrees. In the winter the driving northern winds freeze icicles on the livestock. The wind blows almost every day. Although there are a few quiet, still days.
Most landowners in the Texas Panhandle like the wind turbines. They see it as an easy revenue stream. There are plenty of wide-open spaces to put them -- so people don't have to look at them or listen to them. Landowners can lease property to investors and make a nice small fortune. For example, a 640-acre section of land will support five to 10 turbines. Each turbine can generate $10,000 to $30,000 in royalties every year. Most leases are currently running 25 years. A single turbine could generate enough electricity for 260 to 790 homes depending on turbine size and wind speed. One 3 MW wind turbine can generate as much electricity in a year as 12,000 barrels of imported oil.
Wind is clean, readily available, domestic and a renewable natural resource. Excluding start-up costs and regular maintenance fees, it's free! According to various sources, it's one of the oldest forms of energy dating back to ancient Persia where crude wind mechanisms were used to grind grain. But it wasn't until 1887 before wind was used to generate electricity in Scotland. Soon after, an engineer in Cleveland designed the first wind-driven device in the U.S. Denmark was using wind to generate electricity in the 1890s. In 1980, 20 turbines were built in New Hampshire to create the first U.S. wind farm. California joined the parade in 1981 with the largest wind farm at Altamont Pass.
A 2005 Stanford University study showed there is enough wind worldwide to satisfy demand seven times over if only 20 percent of the energy could be captured.
About 85,000 people are employed by the wind industry today, up from about 50,000 a year ago. Manufacturers announced the construction or expansion of more than 55 new facilities in the U.S. in 2008 alone, thus creating 13,000 new direct jobs. The number of patents for wind technology grew from 133 in 2007 to 155 in 2008. According to GreenTech (an energy research firm) wind power will grow from a $30 billion-dollar business in 2008 to more than $80 billion in 2017. This demonstrates that the renewable energy segment of the economy can and did contribute significantly to our economy in recent years. No doubt 2009 will bring sharp reductions in prices, investment, orders for new towers, and in fact due to the downturn in the credit market and the banking fiasco, may lose some jobs. But hope springs eternal.
No doubt President Obama's stimulus package for the energy industry will affect a large degree of what success (or lack thereof) renewable energy has in 2009. Although the stimulus package was just recently approved by the president, huge uncertainty faces many in the renewable industry. No one knows for sure what lies ahead. Do investors jump in with both feet and proceed as originally planned? Or do they hold back and wait for the economy to pick up? History has always rewarded the risk-takers.
Although wind energy may not be 100 percent of the solution and only part of a comprehensive nationwide energy program, the Kiowa Indians know one thing for sure: the wind is still blowing in the Wind Belt. It was true yesterday, it is true today, and will be true tomorrow!
For information on purchasing reprints of this article, contact Tim Tobeck ttobeck@energycentral.com. Copyright 2010 CyberTech, Inc.
Nice article but wasn't "The Wizard of Oz' set in Kansas?
Thomas Stacy 6.2.09
7,000 new turbines per year is not even CLOSE to being enough to reach Obama's fantasy goal. Not if you are putting them anywhere east of the Mississippi, where annual capacity value's range from 15 to slightly more than 25%, that is. And for all their sprawling, grinding mess, they don't displace coal or oil burning to anywhere near that degree! The capacity credit of wind in the largest integrated networks on the planet is 8% of rated capacity . . . and dropping as regions try to cram more of the unreliable and steep ramping source into the mix. And as regions add more, three to four times the open cycle NG is required for balancing, and NG's use in this role yields a much higher heat rate than its current load following and peaking use.
It is pathetic that our elected officials would collect our hard earned dollars and give it to the residual scum of Enron as they continue to promise something they have no intention - and no means - of delivering.
Don Hirschberg 6.2.09
Nice lyric story about the Indians. But their way of life could not have spanned many centuries. Their horses were descendants of horses brought over by the Spanish on caravels.
Contrary to the implication of your article, the cost of wind-generated electricity is much higher than coal-generated or natural gas-generated electricity.
bill payne 6.4.09
"The reason is that in Texas, and most of the United States, the hottest days are the least windy. As a result, wind turns out to be a good way to save fuel, but not a good way to avoid building plants that burn coal. A wind machine is a bit like a bicycle that a commuter keeps in the garage for sunny days. It saves gasoline, but the commuter has to own a car anyway. "
"But neither wind nor solar power can be used to meet surging energy demands. And, while wind may be a low-cost resource when it is blowing, no renewable resources will provide for the large "base load" resources that Colorado needs the most. "
"An economic analyst claims he's done the numbers and wind energy is costing the Victorian Government far more money than any wind turbines could generate.
In addition wind is very unreliable, it cuts in and cuts out, so you have to have backup for it, so the costs are somewhat in excess of that crude depiction of the premium price you have to pay for wind.
"Oh, well they just cut in and cut out. Windfarms on average operate for 25 per cent of the time, but they only operate when the wind is blowing, so when the wind isn't blowing they're not available. I think it was well publicised in South Australia a wek or so ago when they had a heatwave of 42 or so degrees and suddenly none of the windfarms were operating, or only operating at very low level and one of them caught fire. Wind is not and cannot be reliable. You can rely on it to be there when you need it only 10 per cent of the time," he says."
fast neutron Santa Fe, NM January 12, 2009
From actual experience, wind farms produce 1.2 watts per square meter. Solar Thermal and Photovoltaic methods capture 5 to 6 watts per square meter. There is no economy of size in either technology. Dividing the watts you need by those values gives the land area in square meters needed to produce the juice. The numbers are astronomical
Bill. So, Am I correct to assume that under your planning, society will simply revert to whale-oil lighting when Natural Gas and coal run out (events which are near enough, eg. within just a few generations, that we should be planning for them now for our ofspring's security).
Don Hirschberg 6.5.09
Len, No, maybe Bill is sorta saying that given the world population we now have (and still grwing) there is no solution or combination of solutions. It seems we are programmed with this notion that all problems are created with solutions in the back of the book. But we know better. We even have a word for it: dilemma. This just happens to be a big one.
Typical tight-gas production / well / yr 1 bcf (1,050,000 GJ / yr / well)
Typical well distribution 6 wells / sq mile (6,300,000 GJ / yr / sq mile)
Typical well life 20 yrs
So that means current gas production rates "use" 21,000 sq miles continuously, and must add 1,050 new sq miles area / year to service present markets.
eSolar (thermal power towers) can do 350 acres of land per 100 MW power plant, or 200 MW x 6 hr x 365 = 400,000 MWh electrical / yr / sq mile. or 1,400,000 GJ electrical / yr / sq mile
So Natural Gas production "uses" about 1/6th the area of solar thermal for the same GJ output, but in fuel form rather than electricity (shouldn't we cut the solar land area in half for that?). And NG wells are constantly depleting.......
Perhaps thinking before talking.....
Don Hirschberg 6.6.09
Len, are you saying six gas wells use a square mile (640 acres) of land? If it were pasture the cattle would hardly know there were any wells. If it were in a corn field I wonder if all six wells would take one acre out of production.
Len Gould 6.7.09
Don, if the solar is installed where logical, chances are the only thing disturbed would be a few common cacti. (I know, every cactus has an "environmentalist/gas industry shill" as a friend)
Len Gould 6.7.09
I'd also note that every gas well must produce "on the order of" 4,000 to 8,000 cu ft of rock shavings from the drill. What happens to that? Or the salt water from coal bed methane? Solar-electric transmission is declared impossible, yet no-one questions a trans-continental gas pipeline, even though far more people are killed by pipelines than electric transmission lines. How many sq miles of land will be "used" by a 2,500 mile pipeline from Alaska which might service 5% - 10% of current market for just a few years?
I know, neither is significant. That's my real point.
Jeffrey Anthony 6.9.09
What's poathetic is when anti-wind activists like Tom Stacy post complete drivel and distortions of fact to further their agenda, making points that are based on lies, and other read those posts and might possibly believe some of it.
Len Gould 6.10.09
Jeffrey. What's your take on the following item I noticed in Physorg.com? I note that the effect, even if verified, is so far apparent only east of the Mississippi, and is likely/possibly due to reduced ice on the great lakes and possibly snow cover. - Research suggests winds dying down
[QUOTE] a first-of-its-kind study suggests that average and peak wind speeds have been noticeably slowing since 1973, especially in the Midwest and the East.
"It's a very large effect," said study co-author Eugene Takle, a professor of atmospheric science at Iowa State University. In some places in the Midwest, the trend shows a 10 percent drop or more over a decade. ...
Pryor said a 10 percent change in peak winds would translate into a 30 percent change in how much energy is reaped. But because the research is in such early stages, she said, "at this point it would be premature to modify wind energy development plans."
Robert Gramlich, policy director at the American Wind Energy Association, said the idea of reduced winds was new to him. He wants to see verification from other studies before he worries too much about it.[/QUOTE]
Kent Wright 6.14.09
Not everyone who raises comments about the capabilities of wind is a liar, an anti-wind activist, and a poster of drivel and distortions. Wind advocacy would draw less criticism if the promoters were more open with facts. For instance, if industry reps and writers of gushy press releases would occasionally use words like "megawatt-hours" and "capacity factor" in sentences perhaps it would help their credibility. Furthermore, claims of “X number of MW are enough for Y number of homes” are meaningless and should be professionally challenged.
That being said, everyone please help yourself to a few facts from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The following data are straight out of the EIA, but the tables below are mine and I double-checked the calculations.
2007 Annual Data Summary of electrical generation in the USA
[NOTE: 2008 EIA data to be released in October, 2009]
The three primary sources of fuel for electricity are coal, natural gas (NG) and nuclear. These together produced around 90% of the total electricity generated in 2007. The total generation capacity of all sources was 994,888 MW which produced 4,156,745,000 MWh of electricity. Based on the number of hours in the year, 8760, the overall capacity factor of all sources combined was 0.502, or 50%.
Coal capacity in megawatts (MW): 312,738 Coal capacity in % of total capacity: 31.4 Coal generation in megawatt-hours (MWh): 2,016,456,000 Coal generation as a percent of total: 48.5 Coal capacity factor in % for the year: 73.6 Coal output in MWh per MW of capacity: 6448
NG capacity in megawatts (MW): 392,876 NG capacity in % of total: 39.5 NG generation in megawatt-hours (MWh): 896,590,000 NG generation as a percent of total: 21.6 NG capacity factor in % for the year: 26 NG output in MWh per MW of capacity: 2282
Nuclear capacity in megawatts (MW): 100,266 Nuclear capacity in % of total: 10.3 Nuclear generation in megawatt-hours (MWh): 806,425,000 Nuclear generation as a percent of total: 19.4 Nuclear capacity factor in % for year: 91.8 Nuclear output in MWh per MW of capacity: 8042
Wind capacity in megawatts (MW): 16,515 Wind capacity in % of total: 1.66 Wind generation in megawatt-hours (MWh): 34,450,000 Wind generation as a percent of total: 0.83 Wind capacity factor in % for year: 23.8 Wind output in MWh per MW of capacity: 2086
Solar (solar thermal + PV) capacity in megawatts (MW): 502 Solar capacity in % of total: 0.05 Solar generation in megawatt-hours (MWh): 612,000 Solar generation as a percent of total: 0.015 Solar capacity factor in % for year: 13.9 Solar output in MWh per MW of capacity: 1219
Kent Wright 6.14.09
Sorry. The above "tables" became paragraphs in the submittal.
