Thanks to T. Boone Pickens, wind power is getting a lot of attention.
It is hardly a new concept. Farm country is dotted with small windmills that were - maybe still are - used to lift water to the surface for livestock quartered in remote fields.
Wind farms have been sprouting up everywhere and many more are planned. One very controversial farm is proposed for the ocean off of the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts. Critics are calling it a visual blight
I drove up out of a dip on Interstate 80 in Wyoming about ten years ago and stretching on a ridgeline in front of me were 15 or 20 gigantic turbines turning slowly in a light breeze. I don't know how many homes they were powering, but in the middle of an empty tan landscape they were as beautiful as any Calder mobile.
Pickens, an irascible Texas oilman and corporate raider, doesn't have art on his mind, profit is more his style and but that's okay. He is using his name, his influence, and a substantial piece of his immense wealth to advocate for wind energy. His plan, launched last summer, envisions capturing wind in the "wind corridor" that exists in the middle part of the country, stretching from Texas to the Canadian border to produce one-fifth of the nation's electricity.
Under his plan transmission lines would be built to carry the power from the sparsely inhabited land where it is produced to the cities where it is needed. Natural gas, one of the principal fuels burned to produce electricity today, would be diverted to transportation. Natural gas is abundant in the U.S. and burns much cleaner than diesel or gasoline.
The Pickens farm would boast 2,700 turbines and produce 4,000 megawatts of electricity. Pickens has announced he will sink $10 billion of his own money into the project.
While Pickens has gotten a lot of press and has appeared on virtually every news oriented show on television, there has been little critical comment on his proposal. One critic, writing in something called "Windcow" maintains that the 25 percent return T. Boone expects to see on his investment will be a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the 80 year-old oilman through various wind tax credits available through both the federal government and the state of Texas. My antenna shot up last summer when Pickens, testifying before a Senate committee, uttered the words "eminent domain" when talking about the role he would like to see government take in his project.
T. Boone Pickens and his vision are beyond the scope of this forum; I merely brought him up to illustrate how trendy the discussion of wind power has become and why. But, now that the subject has been raised in the national consciousness, can wind power play a role closer to home? Are current products to produce that form of electricity for home use feasible or just an expensive hobby?