Good "green power" news for the US

[WinfieldMike]

Sure, China is investing heavily in infrastructure (we will be too as part of the recovery program), but look who is helping them, an American company. The Chinese could build anything they want, nuclear, coal, oil, etc. but I think they realize the future is solar and wind. I'm glad to see them turning to a US company to show them how. The Chinese set a goal in 2005 to generate 15% of all their power from green sources by 2020, but they say they may be able to raise that goal to 20% because things are going so well. Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona could be our very own "Saudi Arabia" of wind and solar. And speaking of wind, there is a town in Texas that I used to drive through 2 or three times a year where all the trees grow at a slant because of the constant wind.

Now, lets get to building these things here!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_china_sol ... o48mN0fNdF

[tmaiden]

I heard that the farmers in the west and southwest have started to charge more for the power companies to errect wind towers on their land. The price of the land has gotton so high, that the wind farm companies have moved to mexico to errect the new wind farms. Aparently, they already have high tension power lines that go accross the boarder. It is easy for them to tie the wind farm into the USA power grid. Also, there are few "environmental" protection laws in northern mexico. A large part of northern mexico is desert, and no good for farming anyway.

[WinfieldMike]

A large part of New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada are desert and completely useless for farming. When my parents were in Nevada (3 years ago) the BLM was selling desert land CHEAP, like $100 an acre cheap. I can't see how there is any shortage of land. Of course, the more remote it is the more expensive it is to get the power to the grid.

[tmaiden]

Yes, all that sun and wind, on land that is not good for much - they could turn Arizona and New Mexico into real CASH COWS.

I guess that blowing sand might not be good for the generators, but there should be a way around that.

I wonder what the hold up is? It must be more complicated than we think it is. There has to be people that want to invest in companies that build and run solar and wind generating plants.

We will need all this electricity when we have to plug in our electric cars.

[gifted]

Wind also doesn't make for good baseline power. When the wind doesn't blow, you need a gas turbine or something to keep the juice flowing. If it weren't for the subsidies, wind power wouldn't be cost effective for main grid power.

[tmaiden]

They could put extra generators in different parts of the country & on both coasts.

Solar is good during the day ( when not cloudy) it would be good to offset the additional load used by air conditioning, in summer.

But it wont help when you are trying to heat the house at night, in the winter.

I think that a lot of the wind mill generators are built in sweden or holand.