North Dakota Announces Biggest Wind Farm
North Dakota – the top state for wind power according to the American Wind Energy Association – is far behind less windy states in utilizing its clean, powerful natural resource. But that gap will soon narrow.
A $250 million wind farm is planned for Langdon in the northeast corner of the state. The 106 wind turbines will start spinning later this year or early next year, pumping out 159 MW of electricity – enough to power about 48,000 homes. The Langdon Wind Project is a partnership between Minnkota Power Cooperative of Grand Forks, Otter Tail Power of Minnesota, and FPL Energy of Florida, the world’s largest wind developer. From the Fargo Forum:
Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker was on hand for the announcement, which he applauded as a big step in North Dakotas development of renewable energy.
We understand this is not going to replace everything, Walaker said, but added that it will help reduce the nations dependency on foreign oil. I am so happy that this has gone forward.
The project will produce 10 permanent full time jobs, 50 construction jobs, $1 million in yearly sales tax revenues, a half million in yearly property tax revenues, and a half million in yearly lease payments and royalties to landowners, according to FPL. A 35-mile transmission line and substation will also be upgraded.
American Wind Energy Association
Fargo Forum
U.S. Department of Energy
April 4th, 2007 at 5:29 am
I admit, plug-in hybrids were not part of the EV fad in the 90’s. I remember how EVs were supposed to become a significant portion of vehicles. Over the past 6 years I’ve driven 31,000 miles and I have yet to see an electric vehicle still on the road. I didn’t even see one back then. Since the initial excitement over the EV calmed down and I’ve never seen one on the road in the past 6 years, I call it a fad. So sue me.
To blame large corporations for not developing EV technology because they have their evil, grubby little hands stuck in internal combustion is asinine. You sound ridiculous. If they could make money doing it, they would. Please, take an economics class.
Phoenix and Tesla are concept cars. I’m not even sure if the Phoenix has a prototype out. I read the Tesla Roadster has a target price of $100,000. When they actually sell 10,000, I’ll eat a crow sandwich.
I don’t need or care to identify myself. That is why. Most people who respond on this blog do not share their ID. I don’t care if it adds validity to any argument. If people read what I say, they can make up their own minds.
I apologize for those wasted lattes you consumed while nearly hammering out all of those probably well thought out challenges.
I suppose you could say I’m a pro-capitalist conservationist. While you may say those concepts are mutually exclusive, I believe we need a balance of both. Believe it or not, I’m actually hoping those EVs and plug-in hybrids are successful but doubtful that they will be.
April 4th, 2007 at 5:55 am
OK, David, you need to relax. I think you’ve had enough caffeine for a while.
All I was attempting to say by pointing out the first map is that ND is a great place for wind in comparison to the rest of the US. I don’t think 20 years will change that fact significantly. I think we all agree on this. If it does change significantly over 20 years, what’s the point of building wind mills if they might not be producing power just as they begin to pay for themselves?
You found a higher resolution map of ND. Super job! I think yours and the older one I found say just about the same thing. I’m not sure if yours is a statistical yearly average, but it is true that there is seasonal variation of wind power in ND. I think we can all agree on this.
OK, again, relax. I was attempting to give readers good information about the nation as a whole with that older map (if we can assume wind patterns don’t change much over 20 years). In fact, the page I linked to has another link at the bottom that you can use to find more information about that map. Your map is just an image with no further information. I do like how yours has transmission lines plotted though. It appears more transmission lines are needed near some of the high power wind veins.
Dave, find me a more recent wind map of the entire nation like mine so we can see how much wind power changes over the years. I suspect they’ll be very similar from year to year.
April 4th, 2007 at 5:57 am
Wind *turbines*. My bad.
April 9th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
If you don’t think wind is reliable than you haven’t lived with it. A non windy day in the windy states is still 5-10 mph.
April 11th, 2007 at 4:41 am
Wind has been here for as long as the atmosphere existed on this planet and will be here as long as we have an atmosphere. Can one say that fossil fuels will be here in quantity after the passage of another two centuries?
The present use of wind results in the savings of fossil. We presently cannot replace fossil power because it takes about 500 million years to produce so we must protect the sources we have. Do some people think the sources will last forever at the present rate of use? I think that their great grand children would laugh at this type of thinking.
adrianakau@aol.com
May 5th, 2007 at 7:09 am
I am a wind developer and I assure you that we tell the truth about our projects. In the business we use the rated (or nameplate) capacity of the farm as a way to standardize. It’s the method power plants have always used to express the output from tradition generation facilities and we brought it with us to wind.
Everyone involved realizes that the actual capacity will be somewhere south of 50%, and usually less than 40%. What matters to us is the amount of power produced, because that’s what we sell. This is expressed in kilowatt hours which is a more cumbersome figure when viewed as yearly output.
As for wind being “totally unreliable” you’ve clearly haven’t spent much time in North Dakota. Leaving that aside, it’s better to say that wind is a variable resource. It’s not the whole solution for our energy needs, but it can easily handle 25% of the burden. Going to clean power doesn’t have to mean the end of the internal combustion engine either. It’s possible to use green power to create hydrogen by passing a current through water. Provided we invest in a hydrogen infrastructure, this energy carrier could make a nearly seamless transition into existing internal combustion technology. (BMW has hydrogen powered vehicles already.)