Brian's Morning Newsletter

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Wind Farm photos courtesy of PNM http://www.pnm.com/systems/nmwec.htm

 

The New Mexico Wind Energy Center, the state's most ambitious renewable energy project, officially went online Oct. 1, 2003. The center is the seventh-largest wind generation project in the United States.

Located 170 miles southeast of Albuquerque and 20 miles northeast of Fort Sumner, the wind center is perfectly suited for eastern New Mexico's windy landscape. Power production does not require water, produce emissions or generate solid waste.

The wind center consists of 136 turbines, each standing 210 feet high. The facility can produce up to 200 megawatts of power, or enough electricity to power 94,000 average-sized New Mexico homes.

Florida-based FPL Energy owns and manages the facility, while PNM purchases all of its output.

I blew the images up from 400 pixels to 640 pixels and lost some resolution, you can see the original slide show here

 

I love the way these clouds came through. I had two images this morning from our north back yard, but I thought if I am going to call this BMN "Wind Farms," I better stick to pictures of wind farms  

Of course being a mountain loving man, I believe these wind farms are suited to deserts or prairies, or whatever this type of terrain is called. My understanding is that a major concern with wind farms is power transmission, which may be why they selected Bernal. Location Location Location
I wish the world's powers that be would give the energy to the locals. For example, if there are local natural gas wells, then it seems like the locals ought to get discounted gas because it doesn't need to be shipped. Same with mega wind farm transmission of power, just don't do that. Put the wind farm as close to Las Vegas, have the people pay for the turbines in taxes or bonds or whatever then pay them back with discounted power. What's the problem, why does everything need to be "For Profit" for investors on the other side of the world?

Yeah nice photography, yeah I get it, PMN does what it can to make these wind farms look nice. To be honest I think they succeed.  

You may be saying, "Why not put 100 of these big suckers in our valley, if I like them so much. One dimension which all turbine engineers adhere to is  the fall zone (the area all around a turbine equal to its height) our valley is small, sorry we could only fit five or six turbines. Plus the wind up here in the mountains is turbulent, unlike in the plains.

Now think about a wind farm East of Las Vegas out past the airport, wouldn't that be nice? There is a lot of space there, and as far as I know the turbines wouldn't be in anyones view who didn't want to see them.
Here are a few of the stories I read this morning.
http://www.windaction.org/news/c93-117/?startnum=201

Wind Action News

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Brian Rodgers

Comments online at: http://outfitnm.com/category/brians-morning-newsletter If you wish to chance that I'll post it off my email hit "reply," but not really the preferred method

Letters

Ah, the Wind Turbine Savior myth.  Brian, are you aware that in 20+ years of Turbines (that started at 50' and are now as tall as 500') not one a coal plant closed, as they have to provide electricity during the 70% time of intermittent wind.  Also it will take the lifetime of the project to erase the carbon emissions created during the building of these monstrous Commercial projects.  It is not about the view.  It is about the destruction of the ecological balance of the Mesa.  It is about the impact on human and animal life.  You are the perfect example of someone who walks his talk.  We need residential and community renewables.  If you think Corporate development is for our good, then everything you write about would be hypocritical.  This project and others like it are about corporate greed.  Please research this more before you vote for a destruction that can NEVER be restored. www.windaction.org.  This wave of industry is Enron with a new face.  It is your children and grandchildren's future bailout.  I know you like to do research, so please inform yourself before you jump on the media bandwagon.  gloria
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Howdy Gloria,
You wrote "Also it will take the lifetime of the project to erase the carbon emissions created during the building of these monstrous Commercial projects. "

This isn't a very good  argument point. I don't know what to say to this type of thinking. Are you speaking of the aluminum smelting needed to build the bases? The fiberglass manufacturing plants full of skilled workers creating the beautiful aerodynamic blades often as you say 100 feet long?

The current buzz is most of the anti renewable energy (dis)information has its roots in oil company think tanks

They are good at what they do, they know how to sway people to their way of thinking

All I am saying is try and stand back from this issue and see what you see, especially if the turbines weren't in your back yard

In fact I wish they would install a few here, I wouldn't mind one bit. I can think of a lot worse things
 I agree that there are many pitfalls to corporations doing these, but corporations rule our world, I think they do far worse damage to the planet than with wind turbines. Look at what they did to the Gulf and in Africa

Fossil fuel development is the enemy, not renewable energy companies
I feel the most important issue is in the way people feel about renewable energy, we can't help that the scale is so large, except that it will at some point in ours or our childrens lives be more important on how we think now

Brian
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I am with you on the wind farm in Bernal Brian. A reasonable setback of 2 or 3 kilometers, like they have in Germany, is a must though.
Bernard
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I don't know I like the way they look.
Brian

Photovoltaics

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20014962-54.html

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Wind

Cash grant that propped up alt power due to expire

By JOHN MILLER (AP) 

BOISE, Idaho — The wind always seems to blow on the Snake River plain, keeping this high-desert landscape of sage, potatoes and sugarbeet plants forever in motion.

Still, General Electric Co. executives said the consistent gusts weren't enough for them to take a majority stake in Idaho's largest wind farm, a 122-turbine, $500 million complex due to produce enough electricity for some 43,000 homes.

That took cash — specifically, the promise of more than $100 million in grants from a U.S. Department of Treasury program that's pumped $5.1 billion into the nation's renewable energy projects in the last 18 months. It's helped kickstart wind farms in California's mountains, geothermal stations that tap boiling water beneath Nevada's desert, even solar equipment at a Wisconsin cranberry marsh.

Part of the 2009 federal stimulus, it came as financing evaporated after the 2008 global financial crisis.

Grant recipients say risk-leery bankers have grown more willing to give them money, knowing that renewable developers will quickly get 30 percent of eligible capital costs back, to reduce their debts.

But the grant program expires this year, so energy developers and lawmakers are pushing Congress to extend it until 2012, though they fear election-year politics and possible cost concerns will be a roadblock.

Failure won't kill renewable energy development, but advocates say wind, geothermal and solar power projects would likely slow.

"Industry is already challenged with difficulties in getting power contracts at a price that makes sense," said Alex Urquhart, president and chief executive officer of GE Energy Financial Services, before touring his new Idaho project. "If you take away the grant, you further dampen the market, you add cost to projects that may already be challenged."

For years, the U.S. government steered cash to renewable energy development by offering tax credits.

But when financial markets collapsed in 2008, banks and other investors no longer had an appetite for those, leading Congress and President Barack Obama to approve the cash grants with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

In April, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California said wind projects that may have been enabled by the stimulus grants created 51,600 construction jobs and 3,860 permanent jobs. Nearly two-thirds of wind projects and all geothermal plants built in 2009 took the grants.

GE's project in Idaho expects to create 175 construction jobs and 25 permanent jobs.

"The Treasury grant has been hugely important to date in bridging the gap in financing, as the economy took a nose dive," said Alex Klein, a consultant at IHS Emerging Energy Research in Cambridge, Mass.

Fred Prehn, owner of Prehn Cranberry Co. about 100 miles northwest of Madison, Wis.., is just now applying for his third Treasury grant. He's already received two, totaling about $93,000, to install solar equipment and a wind turbine for his 160-acre marsh where he grows 5 million pounds of berries annually.

Prehn's third will pay about $110,000 for a second wind turbine that will power his pumps and ship electricity back to his local utility to defray costs. The federal grant was critical in convincing bankers to loan him the money for his latest turbine, he said.

"Otherwise, it would have never happened," Prehn said. "People think, 'This is just for the big guys.' It isn't. It's for everybody. Grab your piece of it. But you've got to hurry up."

With the grants expiring this year, a group of U.S. senators including Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and George LeMieux, R-Fla., are pushing to extend the program two years. U.S. Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., introduced a draft bill in the House Ways and Means Committee with similar provisions.

U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, is optimistic an extension could clear the Senate Finance Committee with bipartisan backing — despite deficit concerns.

"The majority of even the conservatives in Congress believe that our energy policy, or lack thereof, is such a serious threat to our economic stability that it justifies congressional support," Crapo said Friday.

"Our sense is, it will be part of the September agenda," added Derek Schlickeisen, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Oregon and a backer of the House measure.

But Karl Gawell, the Geothermal Energy Association's executive director in Washington, D.C., said nothing is assured. He fears bad blood between the respective parties in the nation's capital could color the debate when lawmakers return in mid-September.

"It's the politics of Washington," Gawell said. "It doesn't appear to most people that any significant legislation is going be able to pass, in the Senate, in particular."

So far, most grants have gone to wind projects like GE's — largely because their gleaming white towers and spinning blades go up quickly and can meet federal requirements that projects be under construction this year. Solar, including at an animal clinic in Florida, a New Jersey tire shop and a Texas cattle feed maker, accounts for 5 percent of recipients.

Geothermal power developers got only 3 percent, or $154 million. But those that got cash called the grants a lifeline at a time when traditional investors had fled or demanded "credit-card rates" for loans. Vancouver, Canada-based Nevada Geothermal Inc. got a $57.9 million grant — cash to pay down high-interest debt on its power plant in northern Nevada, said spokesman Paul Mitchell.

And U.S. Geothermal Inc., in Boise, Idaho, expects a $34 million grant for its eastern Oregon power plant. If Congress extends the program, Chief Executive Officer Dan Kunz said it could help him build or expand projects in Idaho and Nevada.

"Maybe three good sized power plants could be brought on line, by this company alone," Kunz said.

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