T. Boone Pickens has cut his massive order for wind turbines from GE by more than half. The energy investor, who made wind power a key part of his plan to wean Americans off foreign oil, said Tuesday he will now take delivery of 300 turbines, which he will use for wind farms in Canada and Minnesota. ...He also acknowledged it's not possible to use wind exclusively for power generation.
T. Boone Pickens has cut his massive order for wind turbines from GE by more than half. The energy investor, who made wind power a key part of his plan to wean Americans off foreign oil, said Tuesday he will now take delivery of 300 turbines, which he will use for wind farms in Canada and Minnesota. ...He also acknowledged it's not possible to use wind exclusively for power generation.
T. Boone Pickens has cut his massive order for wind turbines from GE by more than half.
The energy investor, who made wind power a key part of his plan to wean Americans off foreign oil, said Tuesday he will now take delivery of 300 turbines, which he will use for wind farms in Canada and Minnesota.
None of the turbines will come to Texas, as originally planned.
Meanwhile, Pickens continues his campaign to persuade Americans to use natural gas to fuel heavy trucks, rather than diesel. Doing so, he said, could cut Middle East oil imports in half.
"You only have one resource in America that will compete with oil, and it's natural gas," he said Tuesday at an America's Future Series event that benefited Big Brothers Big Sisters of …
... more [truncated due to possible copyright]T. Boone Pickens has cut his massive order for wind turbines from GE by more than half.
The energy investor, who made wind power a key part of his plan to wean Americans off foreign oil, said Tuesday he will now take delivery of 300 turbines, which he will use for wind farms in Canada and Minnesota.
None of the turbines will come to Texas, as originally planned.
Meanwhile, Pickens continues his campaign to persuade Americans to use natural gas to fuel heavy trucks, rather than diesel. Doing so, he said, could cut Middle East oil imports in half.
"You only have one resource in America that will compete with oil, and it's natural gas," he said Tuesday at an America's Future Series event that benefited Big Brothers Big Sisters of North Texas.
In May 2008, Pickens announced that his company, Mesa Power LP, would order 687 wind turbines, or 1,000 megawatts of capacity, from GE for about $2 billion. That's about the size of a nuclear power plant.
Those turbines were originally meant to become the world's largest wind farm, in the Texas Panhandle.
Now, Pickens says none of the turbines will go to Texas.
He said the Panhandle will still lack transmission lines to carry the power when he begins to take delivery of the turbines in 2011.
Pickens said he will build a wind farm in the Panhandle when transmission is built.
When Pickens announced his energy plan in 2008, he offered two suggestions: Use natural gas for vehicles, and use wind for electric power.
On Tuesday, Pickens said part of the reason wind has become less important to him is the drop in natural gas prices. Natural gas-fired power plants have become so cheap to operate that other types of plants have been displaced.
He also acknowledged it's not possible to use wind exclusively for power generation because of the cost of building wind farms and the fact that the wind sometimes stops blowing. Those who think otherwise he called "foolish."