Torch Renewable Energy , a Houston company, is seeking permission to construct a wind farm near Allen Flat, north of Interstate 10, about 20 miles west of Willcox, Arizona. According to a story in Willcox Range News, the project proposes to construct up to 28 wind turbines with a combined plate capacity of 51 Megawatts. (Plate capacity is the ideal potential for generation. Usually, however, wind turbines actually deliver only about 20 percent of rated plate capacity.) Torch says that this project, dubbed “Red Horse 2 Wind Farm,” “will invest between $100 – $125 million in infrastructure in Cochise County related to the project.”

Each turbine will be as much as 487 feet high with a blade diameter of 192 feet. The company claims this project will employ 20 people during the construction phase and result in four permanent jobs.

 According to the company website, “Torch Renewable Energy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Torch Energy Advisors Incorporated (“TEAI”), a diversified energy company with 27 years of experience developing, acquiring, and operating over $10 billion of oil and gas properties, gas pipelines and processing facilities, oil and gas services businesses, and renewable energy projects.”

 The website of TEAI provides little detail about their projects. Rather, they seem to be a vehicle for venture capitalists and other investors. TEAI says, “Torch Energy Advisors, Inc. (TEAI) maintains or manages the interests of third parties’ interests in a variety of oil and gas producing properties, natural gas pipelines and hydrocarbon treating and processing facilities.”

 The proposed location of the Red Horse 2 Wind Farm seems to be well away from habitation. That is good because there is some evidence that low-frequency vibrations from wind farms cause illness, dubbed wind turbine syndrome, which includes sleep problems, irritability, and depression: see “Health Hazards of Wind Turbines.”

 According to the Willcox Range News, Torch plans initial construction to begin in the 4^th quarter of this year with turbine installation in the 2^nd quarter of 2014, all contingent on the outcome of bird and bat studies. Wind turbines tend to chop up birds and bats. This is of some concern since the Willcox Playa Wildlife Area hosts hundreds of species of birds during the winter migration.

 This article originally appeared in the Arizona Daily Independent.

See also:

Wind turbines versus wildlife

Health Hazards of Wind Turbines

In a recent, rather befuddled, guest opinion in the Arizona Daily Star, solar energy advocate Terry Finefrock urges the Arizona Corporation Commission to compel our electric utilities to install more solar energy generation. Finefrock starts his article with this sentence: “I challenge the Arizona Corporation Commission to fairly evaluate all electricity-generation technologies and act to actually reduce ratepayer and taxpayer costs.” I agree with that sentence. Ironically, Finefrock’s call for mandating more solar energy will have the opposite effect.

The Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University in Boston, MA., has been studying the probable impact of renewable energy standards and tariffs (REST) on a state-by-state basis. This month they published their analysis of Arizona’s renewable energy mandate. You can read the entire report here.

They calculate low, medium, and high estimated impacts. Among their findings are:

The current REST rule will raise the cost of electricity by $389 million for the state’s electricity consumers in 2025, within a range of $239 million and $626 million.

The REST mandate will cost Arizona’s electricity consumers $1.383 billion from 2013 to 2025, within a range of $857 million and $2.221 billion.

Arizona’s electricity prices will rise by 6 percent by 2025, within a range of 3.7 percent and 9.7 percent.

These increased energy prices will hurt Arizona’s households and businesses and, in turn, inflict harm on the state economy. In 2025, the REST would:

Lower employment by 2,500 jobs, within a range of 1,500 jobs and 4,100 jobs.

Reduce real disposable income by $334 million, within a range of $202 million and $543 million.

Decrease investment in the state by $38 million, within a range of $23 million and $61 million.

Increase the average household electricity bill by $128 per year; commercial businesses by an average of $686 per year; and industrial businesses by an average of $28,600 per year.

See also:

Petition to Arizona legislature – Dump Renewable Energy MandatesThat post gives six main reasons why we should dump Arizona’s renewable energy mandate. Among those reason are that renewable energy such as solar and wind are much more expensive and very unreliable and the unreliability puts the stability of the electric grid in danger.

A Maryland company, Solar Wind Energy Inc., proposes to build a giant tower near San Luis, Arizona, located on the U.S.-Mexican border south of Yuma.

The proposed tower, essentially a hollow cylinder, is planned to be 2,250 feet tall, 1,200 feet wide at the top, and 1,500 feet wide at the bottom. This project is described by David Ferris in Forbes here with an update here. It is claimed that such a structure could generate 610 megawatt-hours of electricity, of which about 100 MWh would power the plant.

The technology is based on work done in Israel in the mid-1970s (see Wikipedia article here). The tower is supposed to work as follows: Water is sprayed into the air at the top of the tower. This causes the air to cool and drop down the tower at up to 50 mph. It exits the tower by passing through turbines which produce electricity. You can see a more detailed explanation and a short video at the website of Solar Wind Energy here.

According to the Forbes article, one tower will cost $1 billion, plus another $100 million to pipe water from the Sea of Cortez. There will also be additional costs to build a desalinization plant. Neither the Forbes articles nor the company website provide an estimate of the amount of water required.

Forbes reports that Solar Wind Energy is negotiating with the Bureau of Land Management to lease 1,700 acres of desert land near San Luis. The company hopes to have the plant built by 2018. Forbesnotes that the “project does seem farfetched, and the company’s stock is trading at a penny a share, down from a high of 32 cents two years ago.”

In the Forbes update, reporter David Ferris finally gets some answers from Solar Wind Energy president Ron W. Pickett; here is part of that article:

Where would the money come from?

Pickett said the company wouldn’t need to generate much of its own capital because it would license the technology to a project developer. The company is in talks with “a very credible, notable development company noted for its energy accomplishments,” Pickett said.

Has a scale model been built?

I was astonished to hear that the biggest physical scale model the company (or anyone else) has built is “about four feet tall,” Pickett said with a chuckle. “There’s nothing unknown, and no unknown algorithms, in this system,” he added. The company is confident in its computer-aided design models, and plans to move directly from four feet tall to 2,250 feet tall — the tallest structure ever built in North America.

I agree with Ferris: the project seems farfetched.

The project hinges on Mexico granting permission to build a pipeline across environmentally sensitive land of the Colorado River delta. This area is also an earthquake hot spot (see Arizona earthquakes, 1852-2011, a video time line), so the tower and pipeline would have to be constructed to withstand the seismic activity.

Remember these schemes?

Solar Updraft Towers, an alternate, alternative energy source

Two 2500-foot solar towers to be built in Arizona