More wind in the wires

Editor’s note: The following is reprinted with permission from Rural Missouri, the monthly magazine distributed by the Associated Electric Cooperatives. That publication’s editor, Jim McCarty, reports receiving “nasty phone calls” from those objecting to wind turbines erected in DeKalb County. Please note that wind turbines closer to Daviess County involve a completely different company and project unrelated to the story unfolding in Nodaway County, as described by what’s reprinted here.

Electric cooperative members in three states will benefit from more renewable energy once the Clear Creek Wind Farm comes online. Associated Electric Cooperative, which supplies wholesale electricity to electric cooperatives in Missouri, Iowa and Oklahoma, recently announced it had agreed to buy the output from the Clear Creek project to be built north of Maryville by Tenaska.

That will bring the number of wind farms supplying electricity to Associated to seven, including: Bluegrass Ridge, Cow Branch, Conception and Lost Creek in Northwest Missouri; Osage in Oklahoma and Flat Ridge in Kansas. The new wind farm is expected to be online in 2020.

The electricity generated by the wind farm is under contract to Associated through a 25-year power purchase agreement. Clear Creek will be built on 30,000 acres of private land in Nodaway County. It will consist of 100 to 120 Vestas turbines, each with a capacity of 2 to 3 megawatts.

Altogether, the wind farm could generate as much as 236 megawatts, keeping in mind the variable nature of wind energy.

According to Associated, the Clear Creek power purchase agreement is competitive with the cost of coal and gas generation, traditionally the power cooperative’s lowest-cost generation sources. The long-term pricing of this contract serves as a buffer against the possibility of rising fuel prices for power generation.

Improvements in turbine technology make this an even better energy resource for electric cooperative members. Clear Creek features a capacity factor of 47 percent which will provide a more stable renewable power resource than previous turbine designs.

Associated has significant experience managing the energy output from 750 megawatts of wind energy at the six existing wind farms from which it receives power. With the addition of Clear Creek, a total capacity of 986 megawatts will potentially be available when wind conditions are right.

Associated made possible the first wind farm in Missouri, Bluegrass Ridge, when it agreed to purchase the entire output of the wind farm near King City in 2007. That same year, the Springfield-based power cooperative was recognized as the “Wind Cooperative of the Year” by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and the Cooperative Research Network.

The award acknowledged that, at the time, Missouri was considered a marginal state for wind energy projects. Associated’s faith in the potential of wind energy opened the door for many other wind farms in Missouri.