The Future of all Those West Texas Windfarms

[Old Bearkat]

When the subsidy bucket runs dry, as it soon will.

http://knoxville.craigslist.org/pol/3746100243.html

 

[Texman301]

I was told by the 4 landowners I know that has these that it is in their contractual obligations than when they agreement is over, the company has to come in and take them down including the concrete base down to between 10-12 ft below the surface. Each company has promised them by a year or two after they are gone, the landowners wont even know they were there.

 

[Old Bearkat]

I was told by the 4 landowners I know that has these that it is in their contractual obligations than when they agreement is over, the company has to come in and take them down including the concrete base down to between 10-12 ft below the surface. Each company has promised them by a year or two after they are gone, the landowners wont even know they were there.

It's hard to enforce a contractural agreement on a defunct bankrupt company. ALL of the wind farm companies exist only because of both construction and operational subsidies, and exist only to fleece the taxpayers, ratepayers, and naive greens. They have no real hard structure underpinning revenues, much less profits and hide those deficeits under accounting tricks worth of Enron.

 

[CT6MFL]

can you say "scrap metal" . I have a plasma cutter....

 

[Old Bearkat]

And my advice to those school districts, like Blackwell, who have become dependent upon windfarm revenue, don't spend that money for operations, because in at most 10 years, you won't have it. Windpower is an inefficient money pit that is definitely not "green".

 

[Old Bearkat]

can you say "scrap metal" . I have a plasma cutter....

Goferit! You'll have to take down a lot of them in the winter when there are no crops to be damaged by falling towers.

I bet you could charge admission to people who'd love watching that happen.

 

[oldfat&bald]

can you say "scrap metal" . I have a plasma cutter....

Goferit! You'll have to take down a lot of them in the winter when there are no crops to be damaged by falling towers.

I bet you could charge admission to people who'd love watching that happen.

Have you ever watched two old black men that can't hardly walk scrap out the metal tanks from an old grain elevator? It's amazing what you can do with a couple of cutting torches and a 48 model Chevy two ton truck equipped with a winch and gin poles.

 

[oldfat&bald]

I was told by the 4 landowners I know that has these that it is in their contractual obligations than when they agreement is over, the company has to come in and take them down including the concrete base down to between 10-12 ft below the surface. Each company has promised them by a year or two after they are gone, the landowners wont even know they were there.

I know a guy that refused to have them put on his farm because they wouldn't agree to put that in the contract.

 

[westexasflats]

Now they fixin to start a new one in Goldthwaite

 

[Blue Bird]

I saw the "parts" being hauled south through Comanche and wondered how far south they were going. Our tax dollar at work. There has to be electrical transmission infrastructure in place before the windmill goes up. The state is on the hook for most of that.

 

[JAFO]

http://investorshub.advfn.com/Solar-Win ... WET-20011/ Here is something a little different.

 

[Old Bearkat]

http://investorshub.advfn.com/Solar-Wind-Energy-Tower-Inc-SWET-20011/ Here is something a little different.

JAFO, I've seen this before, and it still will require a government subsidy to get built and operate. The capital cost per MW to build exceeds a nuke plant, and I'll wager the 60% capacity factor they are assuming is about 50% higher than the actual will be. The 18% house load exceeds nuclear and gas fired generation and is comparable to a modern coal fired plant.

 

[Old Bearkat]

JAFO,

I went diging on this concept and found this little gem. This company tried scamming the Australian government into giving them a really big subsidy.

ROM says:
June 27, 2013 at 8:28 PM
The same outfit Enviromission had a big propaganda campaign here in Australia up to 3 or 4 years years ago on how they were going to build the same Solar Tower system some tens of kilometres north west of Mildura which is located on the Murray River in the south east of Australia.
They even bought a station property, Tapio Station [ "Station"; a large as in tens or usually in hundreds of square kilometres, outback livestock grazing property ] to build the first of a proposed 30 or 40 towers that were to stretch across Australia on about the same latitude. A latitude where it was claimed that the cloud cover was lowest for the whole continent.
At one point it was claimed that these 30 or 40 Enviromission solar towers would be able to supply all of Australia’s electrical needs.

I think it all fell down around the fact that the Australian government refused to pony up a fair lump of the finance required to build the first Solar Tower.
So the whole Enviromission outfit packed up and headed for the USA where they probably hoped the taxpayer’s pockets might be a little easier to pick.

There were also reports in the media that the power concentration output was so inferior per dollar and per area that the whole thing was completely uneconomic.
Measured against the current wind and solar energy performance and costs, if true, thats really saying something about the solar tower’s potential economic viability.

The other unknown which was never mentioned except amongst glider pilots was the very strong likelihood that with the very fast, concentrated updraught from the tower ie a massively strong thermal updraught source, there was likely to be cloud formation from the updraught of varying and quite possibly large extent directly over the tower and it’s surrounding glass covered, heat generating areas for long periods whenever the normal atmospheric conditions were suitable for even quite limited cumulous cloud formation.

The higher the Solar Tower and the stronger the air flow of the updraught up and out of the tower, the more likely such a tower and energy absorber would generate this semi permanent cloud cover formation directly over the entire tower and the critical to the entire operation of the system, the surrounding heat absorbing areas.

A smaller version such as was operating in Spain for those eight years would not suffer the cloud problem but the energy output would also be a few magnitudes lower in output as well

As an old glider pilot, all of us glider pilots were busting our backsides to see it built and have a go at soaring the Tower’s thermal updraught as Dr Spencer mentioned.
Probably would have been a bit like trying to soar in a stubble fire and that sort of shatters the teeth on occasions and it sometimes almost needs a change of underwear after a rough one.
Getting too damn old for that sort of teeth shattering excitement nowadays, unfortunately.

Enviromission’s web site has been toned down a heck of a lot from it’s Australian heyday of a few years back but here it is.
http://www.enviromission.com.au/EVM/con ... nologyover

 

[JAFO]

If I remember right Obama gave hundreds of millions to more than 7 losing bankrupt solar and other energy companies that abruptly went out of business . If Obama is not involved it has a chance to succeed.

 

[Red_Devil_DDS]

can you say "scrap metal" . I have a plasma cutter....

FWIW, those windmills are made of metal and not plasma. Your tool would be a worthless gesture.

 

[rainjacktx]

They're sticking little red marker flags in ground up in Briscoe County to indicate where the windmills are going to go.

As a conservative libertarian, I think the whole wind-power effort is nothing but a complete waste of government money, and the pinnacle of crony-capitalist wealth redistribution.

As the spouse of a girl who potentially stands to own about 3 of those turbines - each contractually obligated to produce a minimum of $9600 in royalties per year for 30 years - they can't build the stupid things fast enough.

I am conflicted.

 

[Old Bearkat]

They're sticking little red marker flags in ground up in Briscoe County to indicate where the windmills are going to go.

As a conservative libertarian, I think the whole wind-power effort is nothing but a complete waste of government money, and the pinnacle of crony-capitalist wealth redistribution.

As the spouse of a girl who potentially stands to own about 3 of those turbines - each contractually obligated to produce a minimum of $9600 in royalties per year for 30 years - they can't build the stupid things fast enough.

I am conflicted.

Think about how having $3 in tax money going to the windfarm company so they can make a nickel in profit.

 

[freeagent]

They're sticking little red marker flags in ground up in Briscoe County to indicate where the windmills are going to go.

As a conservative libertarian, I think the whole wind-power effort is nothing but a complete waste of government money, and the pinnacle of crony-capitalist wealth redistribution.

As the spouse of a girl who potentially stands to own about 3 of those turbines - each contractually obligated to produce a minimum of $9600 in royalties per year for 30 years - they can't build the stupid things fast enough.

I am conflicted.

Cash the checks.

 

[rainjacktx]

Think about how having $3 in tax money going to the windfarm company so they can make a nickel in profit.

Yeah. That makes everyone getting paid royalties for wind a defacto welfare recipient.

Like I said - I am conflicted. $30K per year worth of conflicted. And my wife's part is small potatoes compared to what many folks could potentially receive.

One client has 16 flags in the ground on his property. Another client is pushing 40 potential wind towers.

 

[oldfat&bald]

What happens to that contract when the government subsidy runs out and the company goes bankrupt? You may get stuck with three huge hazards on your property that will be expensive to get rid of. At least that's better than having 40 of them.