The Amarillo Globe-News stated that EDF Renewable Energy, a French business, will establish a wind farm for electrical energy west of Adrian, Texas, along the Route 66 corridor.
Spinning Spur 3’s turbines will be spread across 18,000 acres, stretching from Adrian to the edge of the Caprock, where Interstate 40 turns west toward New Mexico. The project’s maximum output capacity will be 194 megawatts.
According to Ken Starcher, associate director for training, education, and outreach at West Texas A&M University’s Alternative Energy Institute, a wind farm’s standard performance is roughly 25 to 30 percent. Wind farms in Oldham County have been operating at roughly half-capacity.
Although the firms would not provide financial details, industry estimates put the building cost at roughly $388 million.
According to a press release, the wind farm should be operational by the end of 2015.
Revenue from earlier wind-farm installations in the Texas Panhandle, including one north of Vega, has lowered taxes in Oldham County, according to the narrative.
Other notable wind farms can be found at Weatherford, Oklahoma, and south of San Jon, New Mexico.
The assumption that the spinning blades kill migratory birds is basically the only opposition to wind farms. Wind energy, on the other hand, kills birds at a rate that is less than half that of nuclear power plants and 34 times that of coal power plants, according to study. In addition, the number of people killed by wind turbines has declined in recent years.
In Adrian, Texas, who owns the wind turbines?
The first phase of the complex, which is 30 miles west of Amarillo and spans almost 38,500 acres, began construction in June 2012.
It was finished in December 2012 and has 70 Siemens SWT-2.3 MW wind turbines with blade diameters of more than 100 meters. The electricity will be sold to Southwestern Public Service Company (an Xcel Energy subsidiary) in Amarillo, which serves clients in western Texas and eastern New Mexico. After the project was completed, Google stated that it had invested $200 million in the facility’s ownership.
The second phase, which is 40 miles west of Amarillo and covers roughly 14,000 acres, began construction in June 2013. It was finished in December 2013 and consists of 87 GE 1.85 MW turbines with blade widths of 87 meters. The electricity is sold onto the ERCOT system for the first ten years, which serves 90 percent of the state’s use. EDF Renewable Energy is the sole owner of this component of the project, with GE Energy Financial Services and MUFG Union Bank providing finance.
Construction on the third phase began in October 2014 and was finished in September 2015.
It covers 18,000 acres and is located 50 miles west of Amarillo.
It employs 97 Vestas V100-2.0 MW turbines with blade sizes of 100 meters.
The electricity is sold to the city of Georgetown and the city of Garland’s utilities. It meets the bulk of Georgetown’s needs, as the city strives to obtain 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources. Following the project’s completion, BlackRock and EDF Renewable Energy announced that they had taken a 50 percent ownership position in the facility.
Through constant monitoring from its operations and control center, EDF Renewable Energy provides operational and maintenance support for all three phases of the project.
In Texas, how many wind turbines are there?
At the start of 2019, 41 states had at least one wind turbine erected. Texas has the most turbines, more than 13,000, and the highest installed wind capacity, 24.2 gigawatts, out of the 41 states (GW). Turbines have gotten larger in size as wind technology has progressed in the United States, and individual turbine capacity has increased as well. When compared to states where wind was adopted later, such as Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Illinois, states where wind adoption occurred early, such as California, have a high number of turbines relative to their wind generation potential.
In Texas, where are the majority of wind turbines located?
Texas has a lengthy history with wind energy. Wind energy research at West Texas A&M University began in 1970, and the Alternative Energy Institute (AEI) was founded in 1977. For Texas, AEI has been an important source of information on wind energy. At 1999, the first 80-meter tower was built in Big Spring, Texas.
The expansion of wind power in Texas is being fueled by a number of factors, including good wind resources and land availability, state renewable energy targets, cost effectiveness in the creation and management of wind farms, and a sufficient electric transmission grid. Wind resource areas can be found in the Texas Panhandle, along the Gulf coast south of Galveston, and in the Trans-Pecos mountain ranges and ridge tops near the western extremity of the state. In 2012, Texas has approximately 10,700 wind turbines generating electricity, but 80,000 windmills pumping water, suggesting the amount of potential expansion for wind energy generation.
Landowners and wind farm operators work together to make a profit from wind power. Farmers in Texas can lease their land to wind developers for a fixed rental per turbine or a modest percentage of the project’s overall annual earnings. This provides farmers with a new source of income while maintaining conventional farming and grazing operations. Although lease agreements vary, the US Government Accountability Office indicated in 2004 that a farmer leasing property to a wind project developer can expect royalties of $3,000 to $5,000 per turbine per year in lease payments. As larger wind turbines are constructed and placed, these values are expected to rise.
Wind power has the advantage of being extremely decentralized in terms of generation (but not transmission). The massive, centrally placed power plants that produce the majority of Texas’ electricity are vulnerable to sabotage and industrial mishaps. If one of these facilities is damaged, repairs might take more than a year, potentially causing power outages on a magnitude never seen before in Texas. Coal trains and natural gas pipelines are also under risk. Wind power plants, on the other hand, are quickly installed and repaired. A wind farm’s modular nature also ensures that if one turbine is broken, the whole output of the plant is unaffected.
Wind is a resource with a lot of ups and downs. It can be accommodated into an electric utility’s generation mix with adequate understanding and planning, while it certainly does not provide the same level of on-demand availability as gas power stations.
Wind conditions in several parts of Texas allow for the growth of wind power generating. As wind turbine technology has advanced and development costs have decreased, the number of commercially appealing sites has grown. (Electricity costs by source#United States) The contrast in land and off-shore air temperatures, especially in southern Texas, causes convection currents that generate large winds during the middle of the day, when energy usage is normally at its highest. Although the winds are not as strong as those in West Texas, they are more predictable, have a stronger association with consumption, and are closer to consumers. Several wind farms with a total capacity of 3,000 MW have been built along the Texas coast.
The wind power construction boom in Texas began in 2008, outstripping the capacity of the existing transmission systems, and expected transmission capacity issues might have slowed the industry’s expansion. Until 2008, the expansion of wind power “piggybacked” on existing lines, but spare capacity was nearly disappeared. As a result, the west Texas system often had such a local oversupply of power during the winter that the price dropped below zero. “Prices fell below US $30/MWh (megawatt-hour) on 63 percent of days during the first half of 2008, compared to 10% for the same period in 2007 and 5% in 2006,” says Michael Goggin, an AWEA electric sector expert.
Who owns Texas’s 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.
Which county in Texas has the most wind turbines?
Horse Hollow is a 47,000-acre park in Taylor and Nolan Counties, Texas, that was completed in 2006. Horse Hollow had 421 turbines at the time, making it the world’s largest wind farm.
That isn’t, however, what made Horse Hollow famous. It is noteworthy for being the site of the world’s first wind farm nuisance cases. Residents objected about the wind farm’s appearance and noise, but judges ruled in favor of the wind farm in each case.
Capricorn Ridge Wind Farm
The Capricorn Ridge Wind Farm is located in the counties of Coke and Sterling. This was the first wind farm in the United States to use carbon offsets to fund the project, which entails reducing carbon dioxide emissions or other greenhouse gases as a compensation for emissions caused elsewhere. Capricorn Ridge Wind Farm generates enough energy to power 220,000 homes while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by about 160,000 tons.
Other Wind Farm Initiatives in Texas
- Duke Energy Renewables confirmed in January 2020 that the Mesteo Wind Farm project in Starr County was operational, with an installed capacity of 201.6 MW, marking the company’s fourth wind plant in the county.
- The $720 million Lonesome Wind Farm, which has a capacity of 450 megawatts, began operations in December 2019, bringing with it an estimated annual output of 1.9 million megawatt hours.
- The wind Production Tax Credit (PTC) was extended for another year through the end of 2020, and it was restored from 40% to 60% of the 2.5 cents per kWh value, enabling further wind energy growth in Texas and across the United States.
Texas28,843MW
With a total installed capacity of 28,843MW in 2019, Texas leads the nation in wind energy output. For the first time in 2019, wind power outperformed coal as a source of energy in the state.
During Governor Rick Perry’s tenure, wind energy grew dramatically. Wind power increased from 116MW to more over 11,000MW during his term, and $7 billion was invested in a transmission scheme to connect breezy, mostly empty West Texas to towns in need of more power.
With 627 turbines delivered by Mitsubishi, Siemens AG, and General Electric, the 781.5MW Roscoe wind farm is the state’s largest. The wind farm is located on 100,000 acres of land and is owned and maintained by the German company E.ON Climate and Renewables.
Iowa10,190MW
In 2019, Iowa is rated second in the country, with a total installed capacity of 10,190MW. In 2019, the state had the highest percentage of electricity generated from wind in the United States, at 41.7 percent.
When Iowa established a law in 1983 requiring utility companies to own or contract 105MW of renewable energy, it became the first state to do so. Siemens Gamesa and TPI Composites, two major wind turbine manufacturers, have made considerable investments in Iowa.
According to the American Wind Energy Association, 116 wind projects were operational in the fourth quarter of 2019, with 1,175 MW of wind power under construction and 384MW in advanced development.
Oklahoma8,172MW
Oklahoma is placed third on this list, with 8,172MW of installed capacity. Its wind power resources have the ability to meet roughly 10% of the country’s electrical needs.
In Oklahoma, wind power overtook coal-fired generation for the first time in 2016, and the renewable energy source accounted for 31.7 percent of total electricity generation in 2019. Nearly 9,000 employment are directly and indirectly supported by the state’s wind industry.
Blue Canyon is Oklahoma’s largest wind farm, with a capacity of 423.45MW, enough to power about 104,000 households annually.
Kansas6,128MW
Kansas, with its central location in the Midwest, is a good location for wind turbine production. Since the beginning of 2008, the state’s wind producing capacity has more than tripled.
The Renewable Energy Standards Act was passed by the Kansas Legislature in May 2009, requiring utilities to generate or purchase 20% of their energy from renewable sources by 2020.
According to projections, the Kansas power system might supply 7,000MW of wind energy export by 2030. For locations that generate power from renewable sources, a 10-year property tax exemption is available.
California5,973MW
Beginning in the early 1980s, California was the first US state to establish significant wind farms. Wind energy is the state’s most abundant renewable energy source.
The Alta Wind Energy Centre, the largest wind farm in the United States, is located in the state. It is the world’s third-largest onshore windfarm, with a capacity of 1,550MW.
California Governor Jerry Brown signed two bills in September 2018 aimed at getting the state to 100 percent renewable energy and carbon neutrality by 2045.
What is the projected lifespan of a wind turbine?
A modern wind turbine of acceptable quality will typically last 20 years, however this can be extended to 25 years or beyond depending on environmental circumstances and proper maintenance practices. However, as the structure ages, the maintenance expenditures will rise.
In the Texas Panhandle, how many wind turbines are there?
Panhandle Wind 1 is made up of 118 General Electric 1.85 MW wind turbines, whereas Panhandle Wind 2 is made up of 79 Siemens Gamesa 2.3 MW turbines.
What is the location of the world’s largest wind farm?
With a planned installed capacity of 20GW, Jiuquan Wind Power Base is the world’s largest wind farm. It will have 7,000 wind turbines constructed across the provinces of Gansu, China, including Jiuquan, Inner Mongolia, Hebei, Xinjiang, Jiangsu, and Shandong.
The project is being executed as part of the country’s Renewable Energy Law, which was passed in February 2005 and aims to achieve 200 GW of installed wind power. The wind farm’s first phase, with 3,500 turbines and a capacity of 5.16 GW, was finished in November 2010.