Price tag of the world's largest wind farm spirals
Due to the rising price of, well, almost everything I can think of, it looks like the price of T. Boone Pickens' colossal wind project is on a steady climb. When he first mentioned the 4,000MW venture to the Wall Street Journal, the cost was $6B. When we wrote about it a couple of months ago, it was up to $10B. Now, according to his interview with Life on Earth, the price tag has passed the $12B threshold -- talk about a moving target.Obviously, some of this price hike has to do with rising manufacturing costs and spiking commodity prices. It's kind of ironic that these out of control oil prices are reeking havoc on the construction costs renewable energy, but that's only part of the story.
Apparently, the 80 year-old oil tycoon is willing to deal with the inflated costs of this project, because he likes to get his way -- and he wants to see this project completed in his lifetime. From the interview:
So to fit the schedule of when we're gonna be ready to start spinning, which will be the last of 2011, we need to have transmission in place at that time, and this is the only way we can time it to work that way. And, see, everything has gotta happen fast for me, because I'm 80 years old."It's a good thing that Pickens and Co. have such deep pockets, because a lesser investor might be backing out by now. When confronted with the fact that the farm would need at least $2B worth of transmission lines to get up and running, Pickens decided to pay for that too. Apparently, he's not willing to wait for the state or a utility company to get around to it.
[via Earth2Tech]
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