T. Boone Pickens goes long in windmills

Forbes, What The Pickens Fiasco Means To Green

He's stuck with $2 billion worth of General Electric turbines, which he hopes to move to smaller projects throughout the Midwest and Canada. He's also decided to wait for the government to build transmission to carry wind power in Texas.

Transmission is a critical and often overlooked component to making green energy work, particularly because wind and solar resources are often located in rural areas far from major transmission backbones.

With respect to this project, Pickens was always tilting at windmills.

Good line:

In May 2008, Pickens announced that his company, Mesa Power LP, would order 687 wind turbines, or 1,000 megawatts of capacity, from GE for about $2 billion. By 2014, he expected to expand the Panhandle wind farm to 4,000 megawatts.
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GE will start delivering them in the first quarter of 2011. Pickens has about 18 months to find a place to put them.

"I don't have that big a garage to put them in, so I've got to start getting ready to use them," he said.

Pickens said company officials are considering six sites, including places in Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas. He aims to build three or four wind farms with around 150 turbines each.

The Emirates has lots of wind and solar potential. The "only problem" is how to you get it to market? Transmission is a problem. There's only so much local demand.

But Helene Pelosse thinks the transmission problem of shipping out Gulf generated solar and wind could be surmounted. It's not as easy, though, as it might be in China. Even if substantial technological progress in shipping electricity great distances was made, you have the same political problems you have with getting pipelines completed across several political jurisdictions.

You only have to look to the troubled history of electrical interconnectivity between Dubai, Sharjah -- and the rest of the seven Emirates for the matter.

Addendum:

WESTON, W.Va. - The Lewis County Commission has become the fifth county commission in West Virginia to formally oppose a proposed high voltage multistate transmission line.

The county has filed for intervenor status with the state Public Service Commission. That would allow it to present written testimony and participate in cross examination at evidentiary hearings.

The PSC is considering whether to approve the Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline, or PATH, a joint venture of Pennsylvania's Allegheny Energy Co. and Ohio's American Electric Power Co.

It would run from AEP's John Amos plant in Putnam County, across parts of northern Virginia, and end at a substation near Kemptown, Md.