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Move Over, Oil, There’s Money in Texas Wind

nytimes.com — The wind turbines that recently went up on Louis Brooks’s ranch are twice as high as the Statue of Liberty, with blades that span as wide as the wingspan of a jumbo jet. More important from his point of view, he is paid $500 a month to permit 78 of them on his land, with 76 more on the way.

Who dugg this? Made popular Feb 23, 2008

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  • greenlight2001, on 02/23/2008, -0/+94$500 EACH per month, not $500 total.
  • MetalHead73, on 02/23/2008, -0/+47It's still alot of ***** money. He makes almost half a million dollars a year from wind. That's pretty good in my book.
  • JohnChapin, on 02/23/2008, -0/+40I checked the article just to make sure, but he's getting $500 a piece for each tower per month. When he gets up to having around 150 out there that's $75,000 per month for leasing the land. That's not bad at all...
  • inactive, on 02/23/2008, -0/+30It's windy here in west texas.
  • alpacino718, on 02/23/2008, -4/+33Dugg for alternative energy!
  • Langford, on 02/23/2008, -1/+26Wind never runs dry.
  • inactive, on 02/23/2008, -0/+24It's hard to understand the scale of these windmills until you drive along side of a truck on the interstate transporting a _single blade_ on a special extra long trailer with pilot vehicles up front and behind.

    Very cool engineering.
  • Tanktunker, on 02/23/2008, -5/+26So he makes 77 thousand USD a month from the wind turbines?
    Good for him for going green, but 77 thousand is hardly oil money.
  • mauahah, on 02/23/2008, -0/+20Money is money, know anyone that would turn down $77,000 a month?
  • colincornaby, on 02/23/2008, -1/+20Yeah, I thought that sounded like a complete rip off until I read the article. :)
  • vertinox, on 02/23/2008, -0/+15That's... *pulls out calculator* $39,000 per month! And a total of $77,000 once they get all them running. Damn.... Thats $924,000 per year.
  • funkytommyman, on 02/23/2008, -2/+15I can testify to that. All my ex's live there.
  • Guams, on 02/23/2008, -0/+13And when the other 76 are up and running, he'll be pulling in $924,000 per year.

    I wonder how much land that guy owns and/or how much land area each turbine needs.
  • Enasni1212, on 02/23/2008, -0/+13Birds... gah? Do they know how slowly those blades turn?
  • KloroFormd, on 02/23/2008, -0/+12Do you currently hang your hat in Tennessee?
  • Protoss, on 02/23/2008, -0/+12Oddly enough I recently drove up to Lubbock to visit a friend, and was amazed by the sheer amount of huge wind turbines....It's quite a sight.
  • Ozzsanity, on 02/23/2008, -5/+15These turbines will all combine and speed up the roation of the earth and spin us all off the planet. No form of energy is safe.
  • Tanktunker, on 02/23/2008, -1/+11Unless your grandmother owns about 10 square meter of land, she's getting ripped off pretty badly.
  • SilverBlade2k, on 02/23/2008, -0/+10I wonder if it would be possible to install solar panels on each of the 'blades'..so that not only is wind power being converted into electricity, but solar as well at the same time..
  • kyleflan, on 02/23/2008, -0/+10I see these windmills everyday, and they're quite a sight. On top of being "green" and renewable, the money from the windmills also helps out the community. The local high school is getting a new track installed right now with money the school gets. Our local economy has been boosted with more money circulating through it, and some of the companies even sponsor youth activities like softball and baseball.
  • hansonc, on 02/23/2008, -0/+10welcome to math. $77k * 12 = $924k per year
  • roflomg, on 02/23/2008, -0/+10$77k per month! CHA_CHING!!!
  • imashmuck, on 02/23/2008, -0/+9Damn. I wish my town would do this. The old folks are too worried about the birds that might fly through them.
  • jjmckay, on 02/23/2008, -0/+8Anything is possible. They probably want an optimum weight and strength of the blade. Also they want the blades visible so that planes and other aerial traffic can see and avoid them. They paint the wind turbines an off-white color for just this reason. Solar panels, today, are near black which doesn't seem compatible with that last requirement.
  • inactive, on 02/23/2008, -4/+12My grandmother gets $17,000 by the oil companies. She has oil on her land and they lease the mineral rights from her. 77 Grand a month? Nope, that ain't oil money at all!
    -HW
  • lava, on 02/23/2008, -0/+8I drink your wind milkshake!
  • Ahnteis, on 02/23/2008, -0/+8Not if we put an equal but opposite number of them in China!!!
  • inactive, on 02/23/2008, -0/+8there's something japan doesn't have ;)
  • diggydougie, on 02/24/2008, -0/+7It's all relative. As long as digging a hole in the ground is cheaper we will choose that. The subsidies are to mitigate that. But they also subsidize oil. There is no sense to any of it. If anything they should tax the imported oil and give the oil taxes directly to the alternative people. Or just get the government out of our affairs.
  • tricks574, on 02/24/2008, -0/+7If only we can find a way to lubricate machinery and make plastics out of wind..................
  • mauahah, on 02/23/2008, -1/+8Sustainable development should be a top priority for our government. Virtually pollution free electricity is great and the U.S. has tons of land.
  • KloroFormd, on 02/23/2008, -0/+6*begins looking for a large plot of land for sale*
  • Mahoney07, on 02/23/2008, -0/+6I'm bet she's getting ripped off.
  • Dustmuffins, on 02/23/2008, -0/+6actually, it always does...
  • Goombellaofgoom, on 02/24/2008, -0/+6How do you build -160 windmills?
  • Gazoo2001, on 02/24/2008, -0/+5I'd much rather look at 100 wind turbines than one coal-plant or nuke-plant smokestack!
  • hiikeeba, on 02/24/2008, -0/+5They tried to put them in the Texas Hill country. The folks who moved here from the big cities opposed them because it would spoil their views.

    Currently, they are trying to get the city to recycle glass. But the city makes more money to have the glass hauled off than to have it recycled.
  • Lane, on 02/24/2008, -0/+5OMFG that's what those things are!!! I've been going down I-45 for years seeing those gigantic steel monstrosities having no clue what they are used for. Mystery solved!
  • imapluralist, on 02/24/2008, -0/+5got any land for sale?
  • jonnyboy1544, on 02/24/2008, -0/+5Wind isn't an alternative for oil... it's an alternative for electricity. So unless you have a plug in hybrid or an electric car, you aren't really replacing anything.

    Now if you want to talk coal or natural gas, that's a different story.
  • jjmckay, on 02/23/2008, -0/+5That's the kind of thinking that got them involved in the dirty electrical production. How about following the constitution? For every power we grant the government to do something we want, we also give them the power to do something we don't want. For example, many of the wind farms going up on the ridges in the central Appalachians are under contest by conservationists for property values and also that the farms chop up bats like a food processor. Also the mountain ridges that are developed are sensitive, environmentally, and the wind farm development creates a wide development and road corridor along the formerly wild and undeveloped ridge. The government promoting these has put many stresses on the local communities and states because we are forced from very little demand into high demand to develop these farms. The laws are not in place and that creates tension in the areas that don't want the farms.
  • HaloZero, on 02/24/2008, -2/+7$10 billion dollars for wind turbines to power a small town, $10 billion dollars for a nuclear plant that could power NYC.. Hmm which one seems better..
  • Ahnteis, on 02/23/2008, -0/+5Why? Leave the oil there for when it's really scarce. :)
  • diggydougie, on 02/24/2008, -0/+4They could put families in the towers. Didn't the dutch do that centuries ago?
  • Gazoo2001, on 02/24/2008, -0/+4Well, I hear ya...in my mind, better that we get our electricity from wind, and use our precious oil and natural gas for important uses like pharmaceuticals, plastics, lubricants...rather than burning it, which is insanity considering how valuable it is.
  • Gazoo2001, on 02/24/2008, -0/+4Without arguing over your numbers at this point, wind turbines do have some advantages:
    1. They don't make the ground they're on uninhabitable for 100,000 years.
    2. They don't produce waste that we can't put anywhere.
    3. They don't entail continual mining/refining operations to get fuel.
    4. They don't risk us having babies born with two heads and flippers.
  • hwy9nightkid, on 02/24/2008, -0/+4theres no room
  • Railz, on 02/24/2008, -1/+5It is 10 billion till you realize we're out of oil in 2050. If not out of, in war over it. (Oh look its 2008 and we're already in war over oil).

    Solar and Wind power decreases foreign dependency, creates jobs, and allows the air to clean itself out. Also the tech is relatively still young. It'll make itself cheaper when it becomes en masse.
  • inactive, on 02/24/2008, -0/+4No, it's not all relative. Some things are a waste of money and energy, and others are not. I don't know how the situation with wind shakes out, it probably varies on the circumstance. Also hard to say since the market's being manipulated. I don't think tax dollars should be wasted on favoring clean or dirty energy.
    Though astute observations from you (as well as jjmckay).
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