How much land would be needed for the Pickens Plan to work?

But let’s give the benefit of the doubt to Pickens and say that wind could make up the difference. How many windmills and land would be needed for it to work?

From the graph in my previous post, we have a power deficit of 300,000,000,000,000,000 British Thermal Units. This converted to kilowatt hours is 87 921 325 000 000 kWh. You need to get capacity to figure out how much space is needed, which is in units of kilowatts so you divide by the number of hours in a year, specifically 8420. That means you need to have 10441962589 kW of capacity to get this much power in a year.

But wind turbines don’t run 24 hours a day, in fact, they only run about 33 to 50% of the time, so you actually need double the capacity, AT BEST, to get the capacity needed. So you really need 20883925178 kW to supply the power importation needs for the US.

How much land would this require? For that I went here and used their calculator. The end results:

To get the US off foreign energy, we would need 41,767,850 turbines, which would cover 10,441,962.5 acres. This is also 16316 square miles. Or nearly the size of Vermont and New Hampshire COMBINED. And this is just for the physical items of turbines themselves.

Using a different method, a rule of thumb is that one square kilometer can support 10 to 15 MW of capacity. So using the figure above, we’d get 20883925 MW. So dividing by the best case scenario of 15 MW per square km, we get 1392262 sq. km or 537555 square miles. This is approximately the size of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and half of South Dakota, including urban areas, highways, mountains, and water.

So when T. Boone says that the Great Plains is the Saudi Arabia of wind, you better believe it because if we’re going to use wind to get the US energy independent, the Great Plains will become one giant wind farm.

And this is under a BEST case scenario. Just for fun, lets use the lower end of the power estimates (under the cut):

How Much Does the Government Spend on Energy Subsidies?

Thanks to the Energy Information Agency, I get little email every once and a while alerting me to when they have produced something called “Energy in Brief.” So this week, I got one in the email called:

“How much does the Government spend on energy-specific subsidies and support?”

Jackpot.

And the answer to this question: $16.6 billion just in the past year. To put that in pork perspective, that’s 45 to 60 Bridges to Nowhere, depending on which figure you use (total price of bridge to nowhere or just the famous 2005 earmark). That’s right, we can connect 45 to 60 small towns with their airports for just how much the government gives out for energy.

And what does the government do with this money? Not much, by the EIA’s own accounting:

Have Subsidies Affected Prices or Production?

Between 1999 and 2007, the average real price of total energy per British thermal unit (Btu)3 consumed increased more than 80%. Meanwhile, total energy consumption or demand, including imports, grew by about 5%. Most subsidies and support to energy producers should stimulate supply; so too should higher prices and rising energy demand. Yet in 2007, the United States supplied roughly 72 quadrillion Btu from domestic resources, about the same amount as in 1999. This leaves the impression that energy subsidies had little effect on net domestic production other than to help prevent further declines. But the enactment of various production-oriented tax incentives in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and subsequent legislation may have contributed to the slight increase in primary energy production over the last two years.

So as a result of billions of dollars in subsidies and tax incentives, the US might have had a slight increase in energy production. At least with the 45 to 60 Bridges to Nowhere, we would have ACTUAL BRIDGES, not possible things that people would be hard pressed to identify.

You’d think that because of T. Boone Pickens’ ad campaigns that we don’t do anything to support wind energy right now. And, like most things T. Boone Pickens says, this is pretty wrong. Again from the EIA:

Did You Know?
The estimated value of production tax credits to wind producers in FY 2007 was $666 million. The benefit was distributed over an estimated 27.7 million megawatthours, making wind power the largest beneficiary of production tax credits among all renewable technologies.

And this doesn’t even include other incentives given to wind producers that AREN’T tax credits, like direct subsidies. And this doesn’t even take into consideration that wind power DOESN’T produce much energy. So the per unit cost is an astronomical $.02/per kilowatt-hour. Considering that your energy bill is anywhere from $.08 to $.20 / kWh per unit, wind gets a subsidy that’s equal to 10 to 25% of your per unit costs. That sounds like it’s doing a whale of a job.

But believe it or not, wind ISN’T even the worse offender when it comes to government largess. That would be “clean coal”, which gets $2 billion to produce a tiny fraction of the energy in the US. But once again, clean coal and coal-to-liquids have huge backers in the Senate in the form of Robert Byrd and Mitch McConnell. And that’s money that’s not doing a lick of good.

So before we start heaping MORE money on renewables, a la the Pickens Plan, we should look to see what works and what doesn’t. Right now, wind and solar aren’t.

Gresham Barrett Brings the Stupid

Here in Columbia SC, we’re doomed to have at least one talk radio host who’s a complete moron, Kevan Cohen. He’s the definition of a neo-conservative, and makes my ears bleed if I listen to him for more than 15 minutes at a time. You can’t go five minutes without him making some pro-military or pro-war comment, but on every other topic, he’s about as spineless as they come.

So that’s why I didn’t hear him and Congressman Gresham Barrett talk about energy until the end of their conversation. Hannity wasn’t doing it for me today, so I switched to the other station. I only caught the end of the conversation, but this is where Mr. Barrett brought it. And by it, I mean his completely stupid idea.

Make SOUTH CAROLINA energy independent.

There’s enough problems with making the US energy independent. Like the fact that our electric grid is connected to both Canada and Mexico. But it’s at least possible given the resources of the entire country.

South Carolina, on the other hand, doesn’t have the resources to independent from anyone on energy. We don’t have coal beds, we don’t have natural gas production areas, we don’t have uranium mines. And most importantly, we don’t have the ability to use solar, wind or geothermal energy:

So in order for South Carolina to be energy independent, we’d have to completely rely on the state’s hydroelectric dam system. Needless to say, this isn’t a very smart way to encourage economic development, or keep the lights on in South Carolina.

So what does energy independence for South Carolina look like for Mr. Barrett? Pork. Lots and Lots of Pork.

Pork for nuclear.
Pork for biofuels.
Pork for hydrogen.
Pork for universities.
Pork for everyone.

He will basically be hiding a pork bill under the guise of making South Carolina the “leader in energy.” But he has to return the investment that his sponsors have made in him. His top sponsor, Washington Group International runs the Savannah River Site, which handles, you guessed it, the Department of Energy’s nuclear research. He also has received money from South Carolina’s investor-owned and electric cooperatives who have a heavy stake in all of the nuclear reactors found in the state. So any pork toward nuclear, which he’s pushing heavily, goes towards his financial benefactors. Big surprise there.

Finally, he came up with this bit of genius. He mentioned in passing that by building nuclear reactors, they can serve as desalinization plants as well. Uh, yeah. There’s just a little question of… where are you going to put this nuclear desalinization plant? Myrtle Beach? No, they can’t even handle motorcycles, nevermind a nuclear reactor? Charleston? Perhaps. But do you remember a little thing called Hugo, Mr. Barrett?

The point is that “energy independence” has become a phrase that has lost all meaning. Much like “going green,” this is a phrase that means whatever the person using it wants it to mean.

Wind Energy is the Ethanol of Electricity

The more I hear about the need to switch to wind energy, the more I think that it’s going to become some government mandated item that’s supported by billions in tax dollars and has unintended economic consequences that nobody (at least in the political arena) will see coming, but will continue to be supported by politicians in key political states through a small group that benefits from the mandates and tax support.

In other words, wind energy will be the next ethanol.

I’d like to take all the credit for thinking of this myself, but I first read it in an article in Reason online (a libertarian magazine) concerning an interview with Robert Bryce, managing editor of the Energy Tribune.

The entire article is a good read, but I want to highlight one specific point that got me started on thinking that wind will be the electric ethanol:

reason: How about domestic renewables as a solution to dependence on foreign oil?

Bryce: I’m not opposed to renewables. I have 3,000 watts of solar panels on the roof of my home. I understand the economics of renewables. But an incurable problem for both solar and wind is intermittency. The sun doesn’t shine at night. I like to have lights and TV at night. Unless we come up with some incredibly efficient method of storing large amounts of electricity, it’s not a viable source because we can’t store it.

It’s the same problem with wind. I consider wind the electric-sector equivalent of the ethanol hype. At a conference recently I asked a wind guy, “Without subsidies, how many projects now under way [regarding wind] would make economic sense?” He said maybe 30 percent.

The point here is to say that there’s a place for wind, just like there’s a place for ethanol. But to make it responsible for 20% of electric generation, like T. Boone Pickens and Al Gore are proposing is economically illiterate. The same way that thinking making ethanol responsible for 10% of gasoline consumption is already causing problems with the nation’s economy.

Pickens Plan a Bridge to Gore Plan

From Bloomberg:

While Pickens views his own proposal as a “bridge to where Al wants to go,” there are no plans now to coordinate.

“He asked if we could we join together and do something; I told him no, because global warming is on page two for me,” Pickens, founder and chairman of Dallas-based BP Capital LLC, said. “Page one is foreign oil.”

“There are some pieces where they might differ,” Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider said. Gore’s “feeling is they have more in common than the elements that might separate their proposals.”

I’d like to see where reliable energy is on Pickens (or Gore’s) pages. Somewhere near page 387, I’m guessing. So if there’s some brownouts or blackouts (the equivalent of Lenin’s “If you want to make an omelet, you must be willing to break a few eggs), then so be it. So what if our economy devolves into something seen in Africa, just so long as it is clean energy.

Just remember that whenever you see or hear “The Pickens Plan”, just substitute “The Gore Plan” instead.

Amen Rush! Pickens Plan = Gore Plan

I’ve mentioned before that I prefer Rush Limbaugh’s style of radio to Sean Hannity’s. This afternoon’s broadcast was an excellent reason why:

RUSH: This T. Boone Pickens thing is fascinating. T. Boone has been buying commercials on this program. He wants to invest in wind and he wants you to invest in wind, and he wants subsidies for wind, but he wants a lot of natural gas and he wants keep drilling for oil. This has led to some very critical pieces of T. Boone. I have one here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers in the Los Angeles Times: “T. Boone Pickens’ ‘Clean’ Secret.”

“Well, Californians can clarify exactly whose dime it will be: Ours. Along with being the country’s biggest wind power developer, Pickens owns Clean Energy Fuels Corp., a natural gas fueling station company that is the sole backer of the stealthy Proposition 10 on California’s November ballot. This measure would authorize the sale of $5 billion in general fund bonds to provide alternative energy rebates and incentives — but by the time the principal and the interest is paid off, it would squander at least $9.8 billion in taxpayer money on Pickens’ self-serving natural gas agenda.”

So what’s happening here is we have a piece by Anthony Rubenstein in the Los Angeles Times, ripping T. Boone for basically saying that he wants his plan to be subsidized by the taxpayers, and that this plan is going to cost everybody a whole lot of money, and that T. Boone’s plan is not right because T. Boone is investing in the very thing that he wants subsidies for and it’s going to lead to him getting even richer while we pay the freight, and that is not right.

Well, I don’t think this is totally accurate, but why do we not get these kinds of stories about Algore? He plainly asks people to invest in the things that he has invested in. He plainly asks people to send him money, and he’s out there scaring people to death, or trying to, saying that we’ve only got ten years. Every time there’s a crisis, these Democrats and these liberals come up with the ten-year number. Can I give you the dirty little secret of all this? Any green energy plan is going to clobber us financially. That is the point, my friends. All of this green energy stuff is a flat out hoax, most of is, designed to increase taxes, raise government’s profile, and reach and power. It’s all based on the fallacious notion that this green energy stuff is going to clean up the planet and stop global warming, manmade global warming and all that. I think people had better understand very quickly, I don’t care if it’s T. Boone Pickens, if it’s Algore, I don’t care what green energy plan comes along, it’s going to cost everybody a lot of money, which is why people are doing it. If you think this green energy stuff is being done out of altruism, people want to save the planet, you gotta wake up. It has nothing to do with that. There isn’t a green program out there. A lot of corporations are actually giving up this green marketing stuff anyway because their customers aren’t buying into it — which is a good thing, don’t misunderstand.

I’ll have to look into Proposition 10, but if it is, it goes along with alot of what Pickens has already been doing with the federal government and in Texas. What’s interesting is that Pickens had said that he’d put the transmission lines up on his own dime, but is now going to be bankrolled by the Texas consumers through their utility rates, according to a ruling by the Texas Public Utilities Commission on July 16th.

Here’s what Pickens said on June 6th:

PICKENS: It’s big. It’s a uh, I think it’s the largest wind farm in the world. It’ll be 4000 megawatts, which will be about probably two pretty good nuclear plants. So, it’ll service a million, three-hundred thousand homes, and it’ll be about a 10 billion dollar project without the transmission, and we probably will do the transmission, and that’d be another two billion – so, total cost would be 12 billion dollars.

GELLERMAN: Now it’s pretty unusual for somebody to bankroll the transmission lines.

PICKENS: It is. That is unusual, I agree.

GELLERMAN: Well, why don’t you let somebody else pay for it, like the transmission people?

PICKENS: Well, it, everything goes slower if I do that. So to fit the schedule of when we’re gonna be ready to start spinning, which will be the last of 2011, we need to have transmission in place at that time, and this is the only way we can time it to work that way. And, see, everything has gotta happen fast for me, because I’m 80 years old.

So it only took forty days for Pickens to changes his mind. Amazing what $4 billion of free equipment will do for your mindset.

Electric Cars Closer to Universal Standards

Remember what I said about government intrusion into how much it costs to fuel your car?

You can apply that to electrics as well, except that the electric market is even more confusing and more tightly regulated than the natural gas market. Everything is micromanaged economically in the electricity market. Even in so-called deregulated markets. I say so-called in this case, because in the course of allowing consumers to choose their electricity suppliers, they added more regulations to govern how the process would work. In fact, there are probably more regulations with consumer choice than under the previous regime. But that’s more of a reflection on the nature of bureaucracy than anything else.

But as an outgrowth in the desire (increased demand) for electric vehicles, electric companies and car manufacturers are coming together to create a common set of standards for the charging of electric vehicles. This isn’t a bad thing, as this will be necessary for the common US/Canada market and to enable cars to be used in multiple places.

But the best part? No mention of government anywhere. So the next time someone, probably a politician, tells you government is needed to develop technology for anything, remember this article and the fact that the private sector can come together without prodding (ie mandates) from the feds.

Ok, I have to make one snarky comment. I found this quote amusing:

“Customers could drive from Montreal to San Antonio and then move to San Francisco and they could be connected and charged,” he said. “We are working together to make sure this can happen.”

Given the 40 mile range of the Volt, the only way this trip is happening is on the back of a trailer.

Critique of the Pickens Plan – Part 3 – (Death of the Road Trip?)

Both the Pickens Plan and the various ideas for creating electric cars have a drawback that I’ve seen few people make notice about.

The lack of range for both natural gas and electric vehicles.

For pure electric vehicles, the current available range is about 50 miles. There’s talk of getting up to 120 miles with future technology.

Natural gas cars right now have a range of about 220-180 miles, depending on who you ask.

Compare this to current technology: gasoline automobiles can generally get about 400 miles per tank, which depends on the vehicle, but that a general range for most cars I’ve seen. Some get more, some get less, but an average of 400 seems about right.

Now, for most people who have taken road trips, it can be a pain in the rear to find gas and fill up. Alot of the time, you end up paying more because you’re not familiar with the area, so you end up buying at a station that may not be the cheapest. There’s also the situation where you end up needing to get gas, and then miss the station down the road that’s a couple of cents cheaper. But if you only need to fuel once, or not at all, then you don’t have these problems to begin with. Plus, there’s the delay of having to stop driving, get out, fuel, then get going again. It’s a hassle.

So a longer range means less of these problems. But that seems to be the last issue on the minds of car developers and those who want to prop up alternative fuels right now. Electric car people tend to focus on commuters. Which is fine, if commuting was the only thing that people did with their cars.

It’s not.

The same problem goes with natural gas. From a link provided by the Pickens Plan:

* Second drawback: since natural gas is a compressed fuel, the tank takes up some trunk space, and only holds the equivalent of 8 gallons of gasoline. Honda estimates the vehicle’s range to be 220 to 250 miles, although Consumer Reports claimed it was closer to 180 miles.

NGV enthusiasts are getting around range limitations (and vehicle scarcity) by converting their own vehicles to run on natural gas and adding spare tank capacity. Throwing extra tanks in the bed of a truck, for example, can boost driving range to around 600 miles. The best part about converting a vehicle (as opposed to the Civic GX) is that if you run out of CNG, the system automatically switches back to gasoline.

– Gas 2.0

Throwing extra tanks in is fine if you’re by yourself and you have room to spare in your trunk. But vacationers don’t have that liberty, especially if they have children. Which means they’ll need bigger cars (oh no, SUVs!) or fill up more frequently.

Finally, there’s the problem of filling up. Now, there is the option of refueling at home for both electricity and natural gas. But what about on the road? Especially in rural areas, there seems to be a dearth of natural gas and electric refueling stations. Now, there’s also a dearth of gas stations in rural areas too, but I’m even talking along highways. You’re going to need alot more stations if the fuel doesn’t get enough range.

And what happens if you run out of gas. Like I mentioned before, there’s the problem of bringing gas out to someone who’s stranded. But what about LNG or electricity. Maybe you can find a house where you can plug your car in, but you’d need a pretty long extension cord. Or maybe drain from someone else’s car, but LNG is a bit more problematic than that.

Nevermind that alot of the cars proposed are compact/sub-compact. Again, a problem for families or people who are of larger than average size. I would like to see what the results for a full-size/truck/SUV are before I can say that electric/natural gas vehicles will have mainstream appeal. And without mainstream appeal, we’re just talking in hypothesis.

It seems to me that alot of the focus on travel seems to be withing larger urban and suburban areas and commuters specifically. Which is fine, except that it neglects a significant aspect of driving for many people. The idea of going somewhere other than work. That something that all proponents of alt fuels will need to grasp and pay attention to as well.