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Everything Wind |
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Solar, Wind, and Fire |
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A Membership Renewable Energy Information Website |
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Everything Wind |
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There has been a huge project in Renewable Energy for a wind farm in West Texas. Well, after almost two years in construction, the newest and probably the largest wind farm in the world is open for business, and accepting wind. One hundred thousand acres of West Texas cotton fields have become the home to 627 windmills. We have all seen pictures of these electricity-producing windmills. They’re huge white things with three blades that look like a propeller. Think about that for a minute. They built these windmills in cotton fields. Not only has this wind farm been a boon to the local economy during construction, but they haven’t taken away the cotton fields that are the life blood of their daily existence. In true Renewable Energy fashion with minimum environmental impact, the West Texas farmers will still work their land. The land use was leased strictly for the purpose of building the windmills, but the rights to continue farming were maintained by the landowners. Here’s what we get from this: 627 windmills, 400 feet tall, spaced 900 feet apart, and in typical Texas size, they span across 4 counties. They produce over 781 Megawatts of electricity, enough to power almost a quarter of a million homes. That would be roughly the size the entire town of Lincoln, Nebraska or Fort Wayne, Indiana. Can you picture this? One wind farm in Texas is capable of supplying all the energy needs of the State Capitol of Nebraska, without disturbing the environment or the local economy. One. How many more wind farms could we build? We have plenty of wind scattered here and there around the country. Wouldn’t it be great to build more wind farms and get the electricity produced for FREE after the cost of construction is recovered? Free? As in, produced at no cost because we already have the wind? As in, no coal or hydrocarbons to burn? As in, no dams to build? Could we do that kind of free? This is the same kind of free that we talk about when we talk geothermal energy or solar power. Once the production equipment is in place, the units run themselves. We don’t have to pay for the juice, only the equipment and installation. But that cost is the hard part. We could easily build enough Renewable Energy production equipment just like this wind farm to run our households, our streetlights and appliances. Most of us could have solar panels on our roof. We could have efficient insulation in our homes. We could maintain an indoor temperature in our houses of 68 degrees for less than $5 per month, except for the cost of the equipment and installation. When I see a project like the Texas wind farm go online I start to think about all we can do, each of us, to conserve energy for our future, and what we can do to make more available for our use today. |
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Ocean wind farms in Europe = 22 Ocean wind farms in US = 0 |
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Ocean wind farms in Europe = 22 Ocean wind farms in US = 0 |