Wind in Wyoming

[Old Rocks]

Wyoming Board Approves Largest US Wind Farm

A massive wind turbine project planned for Wyoming, the largest onshore wind farm in the United States, moved one step closer to reality with the unanimous approval of the Industrial Siting Council to move forward.

The council voted to allow Power Company of Wyoming to construct 1,000 wind turbines, with the goal of producing 3,000 megawatts of electricity, or 10 million megawatt hours per year, for sale to Nevada, Arizona, and California, the Casper Star-Tribune reported.

The nearly $5 billion project would be funded by $1.68 billion from the energy company Anschutz Corp., which owns Power Company of Wyoming (PCW), plus $3.11 billion in debt, and would generate total tax revenues of $780.5 million over the next 28 years.

Breaking News at Newsmax.com Wyoming Board Approves Largest US Wind Farm

And another company has already applied to build the second largest wind farm in the world in Wyoming. As the coal mining ceases, the wind farms will take up the slack, and Wyoming will continue to be an energy producer for the US. In fact, the wind potential in Wyoming could power the US. And we still have North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Texas. And our southwestern states have huge solar potential. Renewables are going to become the primary source of our power in my lifetime.

 

[Old Rocks]

Wyoming wind farm energy would go to L.A.

Wyoming — already the site for the nation’s biggest wind farm project — would be home to another $8 billion wind farm under a proposal unveiled by four companies Tuesday.

The project, backed by Duke Energy Corp., Dresser-Rand Group and two others, would consist of a 2,100-megawatt wind farm in southeast Wyoming, a 525-mile power line and an energy storage facility.

Phil Anschutz’s Denver-based Power Company of Wyoming already is developing a $8 billion, 3,000-megawatt wind farm in south-central Wyoming and 725-mile TransWest Express transmission line.

Both projects are aiming to sell their power to California utilities.

“They are both trying to serve the same market, but there are some big renewable energy demands in California,” said Loyd Drain, executive director of the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority.

California has the highest renewable energy standard in the nation for its utilities — requiring 33 percent of their electricity to come from renewable sources by 2020.

The new project will be near Chugwater, about 40 miles north of Cheyenne. But its major innovation would be its ability to store wind energy hundreds of miles away at a $1.5 billion energy storage site inside caverns in Utah.

Energy would be stored through a compressed-air system using four caverns carved out of underground salt formations, similar to a system that has been used in Alabama since the early 1990s.

“This project would be the 21st century’s Hoover Dam,” said Jeff Meyer of Pathfinder Renewable Wind Energy, one of the companies behind the plan.

Wind, 24/7 with storage. And far cheaper than coal or natural gas.

 

[Old Rocks]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/u...es-coal-miners-are-left-in-the-dust.html?_r=0

GILLETTE, Wyo. — After Kullin Orcutt lost his job at the Peabody coal mine this spring, he knew what he needed to do: join the exodus. “Leave Gillette, leave the state,” he said.

Mr. Orcutt is a third-generation miner and one of 592 coal workers who have been laid off here since January. Thousands more job cuts are expected this summer.

More people will follow Mr. Orcutt. While many businesses in Gillette are struggling to stay open, a U-Haul dealer has been nearly sold out since the school year ended this month.

But 200 miles to the southwest, in Carbon County, where Wyoming’s first coal mine opened a century ago, the mood is different. The last coal mine closed a decade ago, but the county may soon be home to the largest wind farm in North America, if not the world.

“Coal is hurting, but wind power is our bright spot on the horizon,” said Cindy Wallace, the director of the Carbon County Economic Development Corporation. “Eventually, we could be the wind capital of Wyoming, the U.S., the world.”

We need to be training the coal miners that are willing, to be the technicians for the wind turbines. And we need to subsidize that training, as most of these men and women have families and cannot afford to do it on their own. Coal is dead, and the renewables are the future. Train our men and women for the future.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Good news.

 

[Mr. H.]

Any news on the issuance of the 30 year permits to allow the free slaughter of endangered aviary?

 

[waltky]

Wyoming should be a good location for a wind farm...

... with the chinook comin' down the mountains...

... it oughta put dem turbines in overdrive...

... lookout lil' birdies!

 

[Mr. H.]

30 year killing permits. Fuck this mother fucking shit.

 

[Mr. H.]

Propellers make happy electric stuff.

Coal make bad electric stuff.

Oil make bad electric stuff.

Natural gas make bad electric stuff.

Coal, oil, natural gas kill no birds.

Propellers kill birds. Propellers good.

Fuck you mother fuchers.

 

[Weatherman2020]

Wyoming Board Approves Largest US Wind Farm

A massive wind turbine project planned for Wyoming, the largest onshore wind farm in the United States, moved one step closer to reality with the unanimous approval of the Industrial Siting Council to move forward.

The council voted to allow Power Company of Wyoming to construct 1,000 wind turbines, with the goal of producing 3,000 megawatts of electricity, or 10 million megawatt hours per year, for sale to Nevada, Arizona, and California, the Casper Star-Tribune reported.

The nearly $5 billion project would be funded by $1.68 billion from the energy company Anschutz Corp., which owns Power Company of Wyoming (PCW), plus $3.11 billion in debt, and would generate total tax revenues of $780.5 million over the next 28 years.

Breaking News at Newsmax.com Wyoming Board Approves Largest US Wind Farm

And another company has already applied to build the second largest wind farm in the world in Wyoming. As the coal mining ceases, the wind farms will take up the slack, and Wyoming will continue to be an energy producer for the US. In fact, the wind potential in Wyoming could power the US. And we still have North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Texas. And our southwestern states have huge solar potential. Renewables are going to become the primary source of our power in my lifetime.

So much for the Bald Eagle population in Wyoming.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Tough to be you guys.

 

[Shrimpbox]

How about some info on this compressed air system. I am having a hard time envisioning it working on the scale they are talking about.

 

[Shrimpbox]

Talk about a girl with a mission, don't get in front of this gal,or she will bowl you over. Very interesting and actually a lot of practicality. Add a ultra efficient fly wheel and the possibility of capturing heat from the process and the sky is the limitless. The problem is going to be that you are living with a dangerous bomb, but even that might be mitigated by constructing an enclosure around the tank. I his could be done anywhere in the world or right at your home. I want to play with one now.

 

[Old Rocks]

Why Tesla Batteries Are Cheap Enough To Prevent New Power Plants

Last year, analysts hired by Oncor Electric Delivery Company were toiling away on a study of the costs and benefits of installing enormous batteries on Oncor’s grid in Texas. The benefits would surpass the costs, they calculated, if Oncor could buy batteries for $350 per kilowatt hour of capacity—or less. That was the break-even point.

At the time, the cheapest utility-scale batteries cost twice that much, the analysts noted, and some cost nearly ten times that much. But prices were falling, and the analysts predicted batteries might reach the $350 point in 2020.

They didn’t have to wait nearly so long.

Tesla’s utility-scale Powerpack battery, unveiled late Thursday night, will sell for $250/kWh.

“There’s nothing remotely at these price points,” said Tesla product architect Elon Musk.

Earlier Thursday night, I was covering a Northwestern University debate on the future of nuclear energy, in which the nuclear critic Arnie Gundersen predicted Tesla’s new utility-scale battery would render new-build nuclear plants obsolete. The battery would solve the reliability problem of intermittent solar and wind, he predicted, providing a cheaper alternative to nuclear power’s 24-hour output.


Gundersen predicted the cost of the utility-scale battery would fall to 2 cents per kWh of the electricity that passes through it, which in coming years would render renewableenergy with reliable storage cheaper than a new nuclear plant. (Nuclear plants currently under construction will deliver electricity costing an estimated ¢16-¢19 per kWh). Gundersen focused on the utility-scale battery, which we would soon learn to call the Powerpack, but most of the press attention in the wake of Musk’s announcement has focused on the home battery, the Powerwall, which is both more expensive per kWh and less poised to reap benefits.

Some observers noticed both batteries.

“The Tesla battery is better than I thought for homes,” wrote the author Ramez Naam in a review of Tesla’s new battery line. “And at utility scale, it’s deeply disruptive.”

Many ways to skin the cat of storage. And more and more of them are looking good.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Waste of money since it will only produce less than one third its rated capacity

But it will do a great job of uglifying the beautiful landscape

Germany's wind power chaos should be a warning to the UK

In Britain it averages around 25 per cent; in Germany it is lower, just 17 per cent.

 

[Shrimpbox]

Doesn't anyone remember the mountains of used tires that used to be reported about? The amount of batteries needed for this extravaganza is off the charts. The pollution, environmental degradation, the cost are way too much. And batteries are never as good as they were when you bought them, their performance continually degrades and the lithium batteries do not get high marks for durability. Worldwide supplies of lithium may also be a mitigating factor. Batteries are not the way to go.

 

[Shrimpbox]

The pace of technology will outstrip this battery stuff. How far away is the possibility of you going to a store anywhere, buying an energy pack no bigger than a Rubik's cube for the cost of a phone card, plugging it into your vehicle and driving away. Or buying 20 of them to power your home.

But let's get back to compressed air. You could bury the storage canister in the back yard. Instead of blowing up your tires you could fill your tank with compressed air. How sophisticated the machinery to transport and create such high pressures needs to be is beyond me, but it won't make anyone sick. What would it do to the atmosphere if we compressed too much air. I want one right now.

 

[Old Rocks]

Since I have worked with pneumatics and hydraulics for about 50 years, I can tell you that such an arrangement would not store that much energy, and the pressures involved would create some real dangers.

 

[Old Rocks]

Now what does tires have to do with batteries? Care to show me any mountains of used batteries? You know, the lead acid ones used by the hundreds of millions in autos? You cannot, because we recycle them. And what makes you think we will not recycle the lithium batteries?

Lithium scarcity?

America finds massive source of lithium in Wyoming | MINING.com

University of Wyoming researchers found the lithium while studying the idea of storing carbon dioxide underground in the Rock Springs Uplift, a geologic formation in southwest Wyoming. University of Wyoming Carbon Management Institute director Ron Surdam stated that the lithium was found in underground brine. Surdam estimated the located deposit at roughly 228,000 tons in a 25-square-mile area. Extrapolating the data, Surdam said as the uplift covered roughly 2,000 square miles, there could be up to 18 million tons of lithium there, worth up to roughly $500 billion at current market prices.

As a yardstick, the lithium reserves at Silver Peak, Nevada, the largest domestic producer of lithium total 118,000 tons in a 20-square-mile area. The University of Wyoming stated that in a best-case scenario, the Rock Springs Uplift’s 18 million tons of potential lithium reserves is equivalent to roughly 720 years of current global lithium production.

 

[Shrimpbox]

And batteries have doubled in price in last five years.

Lithium Mining and Environmental Impact - Lithium Mining - The Worldwide Website........

Lithium ion batteries: High-tech's latest mountain of waste

There are no perfect answers rock.

 

[Old Rocks]

For the batteries we are talking about, the Tesla grid scale batteries, there has been no doubling of price, because there were no such batteries five years ago. The Tesla batteries cost is $250 per kw/hr. That is about $100 per kw/hr less than the break even point for grid scale batteries.

Lithium Mining and Environmental Impact - Lithium Mining - The Worldwide Website

But according to an article published by TIME, “lithium mining, as observed in countries with deposits like Chile, Argentina and China, seems to be less hazardous than other kinds of mineral extraction. ‘Lithium could be one of the least contaminating mining processes,’ says Marco Octavio Rivera of Bolivia’s Environmental Defense League, although he notes that prolonged exposure to lithium can cause nervous system disorders.”

Everything comes at the cost, so while the environmental impact might not be worse than mountaintop mining, it’s going to be important to pay attention to the environmental impact, because there will be one.


Lithium ion batteries: High-tech's latest mountain of waste

The reason why more lithium ion batteries aren't recycled boils down to simple economics: the scrap value of batteries doesn't amount to much - perhaps $100 per ton, Cheret says. In contrast, the cost of collecting, sorting and shipping used batteries to a recycler exceeds the scrap value, so batteries tend to be thrown away. Unfortunately, the market does not factor in the social cost of disposal, nor does it factor in the fact that recycling metals such as cobalt has a much lower economic and environmental cost than mining raw materials. So we throw them away by the millions.

So we include the cost recycling the batteries in the cost.