Friday, May 02, 2008; Posted: 12:05 PM
Corn Belt Power Cooperative of Humboldt has signed a 20-year purchase agreement for electricity from Clipper Windpower's Enterprise Wind Energy Project north of Manning in Carroll County.
The electricity will be distributed to Corn Belt Power's 11 rural electric cooperative members that serve farms, rural residences, small towns and commercial/industrial customers in 41 northern Iowa counties.
The 50-megawatt Enterprise Wind Energy Project, under development by Clipper Windpower of Carpinteria, Calif., will use 20 Liberty 2.5-megawatt wind turbines assembled at the Clipper Wind Turbine Works, 4401 Bowling St. SW. Clipper's 330,000-square-foot plant employs about 250 workers.
Clipper's Liberty units are the largest wind turbines assembled in North and South America.
Kenneth Kuyper, executive vice president and general manager of Corn Belt Power, said the agreement to purchase wind-generated electricity is part of the cooperative's overall plan to diversify its sources of power.
"We like to have a balance of different fuels, including some wind that we already have," Kuyper said. "We thought this was a good time to add some more." Corn Belt Power also buys energy from the Hancock County Wind Energy Center, owned and operated by FPL Energy near Duncan; the Crosswind Energy project, owned by local farmers in Palo Alto County; and the Western Area Power Administration, which generates hydropower with several dams on the Missouri River.
Kuyper said Corn Belt Power, which is a generation and transmission cooperative, has transmission lines near the proposed wind farm.
"We have some 69,000-volt lines in the area that will provide interconnection," he said. "We like to use lines that we own, rather than deal with paying someone else's transmission tariff.
"We're a non-profit cooperative owned by its members and a lot of them are farmers. It's to their advantage if it works out well with the developer using their land for the wind farm and making payments to them." While Clipper Windpower is the developer of the Enterprise Wind Energy Project, the project's owner/operator will be announced as final milestones for the project are set in place.
Construction is expected to start in May 2009.
Clipper Windpower has developed wind energy projects and/or supplied wind turbines to projects in Iowa, including Flying Cloud in Spirit Lake, Intrepid in Storm Lake, Endeavor in Harris, and Victory, near Westside, also in Carroll County. The company has sold many of the projects to other owners.
Contact the writer: (319) 398-8366 or george.ford@gazcomm.com
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