Slimmer Pickens

Wind power projects are being slowed or cancelled as I posted earlier here, here and here. Now Texan T. Boone Pickens has announced he is pulling in his horns on the Pampa Wind Farm planned by Mesa Power. Pickens, controversial booster of the Pickens Plan and California's "Big Wind" Proposition 10, is scaling back or delaying what was to have been the world's largest wind farm, 4GW on 400,000 acres northeast of Amarillo in the Texas panhandle. He ordered 667 GE turbines back in May for mid-2010 delivery. Original plans called for a project total of as many as 2,000 turbines; the eventual number is now unclear.

The change of plans is a result of three factors: the general difficulty obtaining financing from constipated and timid credit markets, the decrease in natural gas prices making wind less competitive, and the $2B Pickens has lost in the market swoon, causing some of his investors to get cold feet.