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Wednesday, August 31, 2005

New Windfarm For North Dakota

I'm happy to see this happening.

There will be an announcement for a new North Dakota windfarm today just north of Velva.

Senator Kent Conrad will be joined by Senator Byron Dorgan and community leaders for the groundbreaking of XCEL Energy and EHN’s new Wind Farm. Xcel Energy is the nation’s second largest retail provider of wind-generated electricity in the United States, delivering about 10% of all the wind power sold in the country.


This is a great thing. For years I've wondered why there wasn't more effort afoot to harness North Dakota's constant winds for energy. Now its happening.

Just a few years ago a local electric cooperative put two wind turbines south of my home town. I've not heard anything official about their output, but I have heard unofficially (gossip) that they're doing quite well and providing a significant amount of power for my region.

These new windmills will be located east of my town and will, hopefully, perform as well. I'm especially happy to see a company like Xcel involved with it. They have a lot of experience in the wind-power field and wouldn't, I don't think, be engaging in this project unless it were a viable way to meet this region's power needs.

Wind power initiatives in this state have met heavy resistance from coal power lobbyists who have used political influence to throw roadblocks in the way of previous projects, which is sort of a sad thing given that wind power is such an obvious, common-sense thing for North Dakota.

Comments

Avatar for The Whistler

There are a couple problems with wind energy.  The main problem is that when power needs are the highest (very hot and muggy) or very cold it typically isn’t very windy.

Therefore wind energy does little to handle peak energy needs.  So you wind up building excess capacity.  Since coal is still plentiful wind energy is unlikely to be economically desirable without being subsidized.

The cheapest power to produce is nuclear.  I think we should build some on the Missouri and export power.  We could be the new Albania.

The Whistler on August 31, 2005 at 09:09 am
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