Pickens’ plan is bold — too bad it won’t work

Dallas billionaire investor and oilman-turned-wind-farmer Boone Pickens on Tuesday unveiled an audacious plan that he hopes will prod policymakers into a more realistic discussion of energy issues.

It’s hard to grasp, though, how parts of the plan would be implemented. Assuming all the rights to millions of acres could be acquired and the wind farms built, there’s still the problem of wind itself. It doesn’t always blow.
A recent study by Cambridge Energy Research Associates found that wind power is least available between June and September, the peak months for electricity consumption.

When the turbines are becalmed, we’ll need other power plants — primarily gas-fired ones, which can be started more quickly than other types of generation — to meet demand.

What’s more, someone has to pay for building transmission lines to carry the power from the prairies. Guess who? In Texas, the cost of new transmission lines is born by consumers, not the generators.

Pickens argued that wind technology will improve as more farms are built, and as commodity prices rise, it will become a cost-effective power source.

“As it moves in, the natural gas will move out,” he said. “The price of natural gas will still be better for vehicles and still be cheaper than foreign oil.”

Pickens has championed natural gas vehicles since he converted his Cadillac and drove around Dallas in the early 1990s, but it’s unlikely average drivers would do the same.

Thousands of service stations would have to spend millions to install new pumps and storage facilities.

Houston Chronicle