Since 2006, wind energy has been a part of Indiana’s fuel mix, providing manufacturing investment opportunities and a diverse power portfolio.
Wind energy is the process of generating power from wind or air flows in the earth’s atmosphere. Wind turbines take kinetic energy from the wind and convert it into electricity.
HOW DOES WIND GENERATE ELECTRICITY?
When wind passes through a wind turbine, the blades collect the kinetic energy of the wind and rotate, converting it to mechanical energy. This revolution accelerates the rotation by a factor of 100 by turning an internal shaft attached to a gearbox. Diversion facilities are generators that create energy in Indiana.
Did You Know?
- Indiana is home to the fourth largest wind farm in the United States, with over 2,300 MW of capacity.
- With 1,264 wind turbines, Indiana is ranked 12th in the United States.
- With 16 projects in operation, wind generated 6% of Indiana’s electricity in 2019.
- Over 1,100 MW of new wind projects are in the planning stages or are already operational.
WHAT TYPE OF WIND FACILITIES EXIST?
Wind energy can be divided into three categories:
- Utility-scale wind turbines range in size from 100 kilowatts to several megawatts, with electricity transported across the grid via MISO or PJM before being provided to end users by electric utilities.
- Single tiny wind turbines under 100 kilowatts are used to directly power a home, farm, or small company and are not connected to the grid in distributed or “small” wind.
- Wind turbines are placed in huge bodies of water, usually on the continental shelf, for offshore wind. Offshore wind turbines are larger and produce more energy than onshore wind turbines.
In Indiana, where are the wind turbines?
In Benton County, Indiana, the Fowler Ridge Wind Farm (FRWF) is located. It is one of the world’s largest onshore wind farms, covering 50,000 acres.
The construction of Fowler Ridge took place in four stages. The first three phases of the Indiana wind farm are jointly owned and operated by BP Alternative Energy North America and Dominion Resources, each with a 50% share in the project. The fourth phase, Amazon Wind Farm Fowler Ridge, is owned and operated by Pattern Energy Group.
The FRWF has a capacity of 750MW, which is enough to cover the electricity needs of 200,000 ordinary US houses. The wind farm may be seen from both sides of I-65 (IS-65).
In Lafayette, Indiana, how tall are wind turbines?
Large wind turbines will be prohibited in rural regions near Lafayette, according to a new county policy.
Tippecanoe County commissioners voted 3-0 on Monday to ban turbines that are more than 140 feet tall. According to the (Lafayette) Journal & Courier, the legislation will effectively ban commercial turbines that can range in height from 300 to 600 feet, as seen at wind farms in nearby Benton and White counties.
Supporters of the restrictions argue that allowing large turbines would stifle development in Tippecanoe County by tying up thousands of acres in long-term leases and lowering the value of homes near them.
Derek Reuters, a Lafayette resident, stated that the prohibition sends the wrong message by implying that Purdue University’s host city opposes the expansion of renewable energy production.
What is the total number of turbines in the Fowler Ridge wind farm?
BP Wind Energy Inc., based in Texas, has agreed to buy the remaining 50% of the Fowler Ridge 1 wind farm in Benton County from its partner, Dominion Energy, based in Virginia. Financial information was withheld.
The farm has 162 wind turbines with a total capacity of 300 megawatts. Fowler Ridge 1 is one of three interconnected farms totaling 42,000 acres and 355 wind turbines.
The facility is about 30 miles northwest of Lafayette, along Interstate 65.
“bpWE Chief Executive Officer Al Vickers remarked, “We are thrilled to announce this deal in the context of bp’s objective to become a net zero organization.” “We have the operational, trading, and financial capabilities to operate efficiently, extend asset life, and optimize wind energy value. This underlines our belief in renewable energy and the sector’s potential for future growth.
According to the business, the purchase will increase BP’s net wind generation capacity by more than 15%, reaching 1,076 MW of energy.
The Fowler Ridge complex is bpWE’s largest wind power plant in the United States.
The company owns a stake in a tenth onshore wind project in Hawaii and runs nine onshore wind assets in six states.
Subject to regulatory approval, the Fowler Ridge 1 transaction is scheduled to close before the end of the year.
Where in the United States is the largest wind farm?
The Roscoe Wind Farm (RWF) is the world’s largest onshore wind farm. It lies 45 miles south-west of Abilene, Texas, in the United States. It is one of the world’s largest wind farms, owned by RWE.
RWF’s installed capacity of 781.5MW surpasses that of the previously largest Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center (735.5MW), which is located southwest of Abilene in Taylor and Nolan counties.
The plant, which was built by E.ON Climate and Renewables (EC&R) of Germany, is spread across 100,000 acres of land largely utilized for cotton production in Mitchell, Nolan, and Scurry counties. Farmers who grow dryland cotton have leased the land.
What is the price of a wind turbine?
If there is no cost or environmental benefit to putting wind on a system with plenty of hydro, one might wonder why we are doing it. The explanation is that many jurisdictions (Washington and California, for example) have established legislation that exclude current hydropower from the legal definition of renewable energy. Many readers may be surprised to learn that existing hydro meets the requirement of being naturally replenished. Existing hydro is replenished in the same way as new hydro would be.
The BPA grid currently has 3000 MW of wind energy potential (when the wind is blowing). Assuming the above-mentioned windmill pricing, this means that BPA consumers have already spent at least $5 billion on wind-energy production with no apparent return. By 2012, this potential wind capacity is likely to increase, costing BPA customers another $5 billion with no evident gain.
The basic line is that we have permitted policies to pass that are both financially and environmentally damaging. Wind developers would have lost their legally mandated status if these laws had not been in place, and there would be no windmills on grids with plenty of hydro.
Electricity generated by the wind is not free. The cost of fuel for any power plant is only a portion of the total cost to a consumer. The fact that the cost of the fuel is zero does not imply that the cost of the power generated is also zero.
This is comparable to how hydroelectricity is generated. Although the cost of water is zero, the cost of hydro-generated power is not. It comprises charges for operations and maintenance as well as the cost of constructing the hydroelectric dam.
The cost of fuel for a nuclear plant is not zero, although it is a minor part of the total cost of generation. It is unquestionably less than the cost of fuel in a natural gas plant, where the cost of fuel accounts for almost 80% of the generation cost.
Wind generating appears to be worth the fuel cost savings for power companies who utilize oil as a fuel.
Oil, on the other hand, is not widely used due to its high cost.
To summarize, there appears to be no economic basis for installing windmills unless there are no low-cost alternatives. This is especially true when windmills are installed on a grid with plenty of hydro, because there are no corresponding fuel savings.
Inputs:
- Installing a 2-MW wind turbine costs around $3.5 million.
- The cost of operating and maintaining a wind farm is around 20-25 percent of the total cost.
- Wind turbines have a maximum life expectancy of 20 years.
- The cost of gasoline is approximately $4 per thousand cubic feet.
- Oil is currently priced at $80 per barrel.
- 1 kWh of electricity requires around 7.7 cubic feet of natural gas (dividing the generation in Table 7.2a by the fuel consumption in Table 7.3a in these tables published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration ).
- One kWh of electricity requires 0.00175 barrels of oil (using the same tables as above).
Assumptions:
- A wind farm’s capacity factor is approximately 30%. (land based).
- For Hawaii, a greater capacity factor of 45 percent is estimated.
- A wind turbine has a 15-year average lifespan.
- The wind farm’s interest charges are overlooked.
- Transmission line costs are overlooked.
What is the maximum number of residences that a wind turbine can power?
The average American home uses 893 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of power each month, according to the US Energy Information Administration. The average capacity of wind turbines that began commercial operations in 2020 is 2.75 megawatts, according to the US Wind Turbine Database (MW). That average turbine would generate over 843,000 kWh per month, enough for more than 940 average U.S. homes, based on a 42 percent capacity factor (i.e., the average among recently built wind turbines in the United States, according to the 2021 edition of the US Department of Energy’s Land-Based Wind Market Report). To put it another way, the average wind turbine that went online in 2020 provides enough electricity to power a typical U.S. home for a month in just 46 minutes.
How much energy can a single wind turbine produce?
Today’s wind turbines have power ratings ranging from 250 watts to 7 megawatts. An onshore wind turbine with a capacity of 2.53 MW may generate more than 6 million kWh per year, which is enough to power 1,500 average EU residences.