December 11, 2008

Two Iowa Ethanol Plants Getting Wind Power



The Iowa Lakes Electric Cooperative (ILEC) is installing wind turbines at two wind farms located near ethanol plants.

ILEC, which serves customers in the counties of Buena Vista, Cherokee, Clay, Dickinson, Emmet, Kossuth, Palo Alto and Pocahontas, is building two separate wind farms near the 110 million-gallon Global Ethanol plant at Lakota and the 50 million-gallon Green Plains Renewable Energy ethanol plant near Superior.

Each site will include seven General Electric 1.5-megawatt turbines, which will be installed starting in early 2009. The two wind farms will produce approximately 71 million kilowatt hours of wind-generated electricity each year, which is the equivalent of serving almost 3,700 of ILEC’s member-owners’ farms and residential homes for one year.

The reason behind placing the wind turbines near ethanol is that the electric distribution infrastructure is already in place at those locations.

Locating both wind projects next to an existing ethanol plant that the cooperative currently serves takes advantage of the existing substation infrastructure without adding to transmission level connection, which can be extremely expensive.

The foundations are already in place and the cooperative hopes to have the wind turbines operating by the third quarter of 2009.

2 comments:

Alexander said...

Wind power is not a solution.
The whole truth about wind turbines is never told by lobbyists and governments.
How could the very weak and extremely unreliable initial energy source of a wind turbine ever produce a steady power of any significance?
Please think!
And read: “Wind energy- the whole truth” at: http://www.windenergy-the-truth.com/
And to show how completely irrelevant wind power is in regard to the worldwide energy and climate crisis visit the following link: http://www.bp.com/iframe.do?categoryId=9024179&contentId=7044895
And play around with the charts you see there (The BP charts regarding energy reserves and energy consumption worldwide over the last 20 to 40 years.) and make some calculations. And if you don´t get confused with the zeros, you will get my point.
The resources now poured into futile, but very ingenious and high-tech windmills, could be far better used for, for example:
1) Burning coal in a cleaner way,
2) Efficiency of energy use in the broadest sense of the word
3) Promoting a drastic change of life style (There are about 6.5 billion people, who all have the right to have some energy to their disposal).
Just 3 ideas.
Alexander

Michael A. Gregory said...

All forms of energy generation have their strengths and weaknesses. And their share of detractors. Wind is no different than any other. But it is a renewable energy source and aside from the manufacture of the turbine creates no green house gas emissions. For those reasons alone it is worthwhile to pursue.

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