Climate and energy

Some scary things are happening across the nation – and some exciting things are happening in Kansas. These are strange times. Everyone hang in there.

Reprinted in full from the Salina Journal (which has a nifty new web page, BTW):

Kansas is dedicated to the power of the wind
10/3/2008

By David Clouston

LINCOLN — Kansas — the “Saudi Arabia of wind” — can be proud of leading a “Made in America” energy policy that uses homegrown natural resources, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius said Thursday.

Wind power is not only terrific for the economy, but “it’s terrific for our security and it’s good for our planet,” the governor told a large crowd gathered for the formal dedication of The Smoky Hills Wind Project. The dedication took place at the headquarters of the wind turbine farm located south of Lincoln, along Interstate Highway 70.

Sebelius, the featured guest for the ceremony, stated that as recently as three years ago, less than 1 percent of energy generated in Kansas came from wind power. Today the state stands to reach a goal of generating 10 percent of the state’s energy from wind by the end of the year.

“We’ll be at 1,000 megawatts of wind — that’s only the seventh state in the country to reach that threshold, and the only state to do it without (a mandate from) the Legislature,” Sebelius said.

The dedication of the wind farm — the largest in Kansas to date — drew bus loads of elementary school students from Ellsworth and Lincoln counties. It also drew landowners, business owners and residents curious about the project.

“I think (the project) is better than what we thought it would be. I think the layout is a lot more aesthetically pleasing, and I think the cooperation with Tradewind and Enel has been superior,” said Lincoln County Commission Vice Chairman Steve Errebo.

Tradewind Energy of Lenexa is the developer of the 20,000-acre project.

Phase I and Phase II include a total of 155 wind turbine generators located in both Ellsworth and Lincoln counties. Phase II is expected to be operational before the end of the year.

Enel, with offices in Andover, Mass., is an international energy conglomerate producing and distributing electricity and natural gas in 22 countries on four continents. Enel is an investor in Tradewind, and a partner with it in the development of U.S. wind farms.

Enel is the owner and operator of the Smoky Hills wind turbine farm. An estimated 25 Enel and contractor jobs are projected to be created to operate and maintain both Phase I and Phase II of the project.

Where the money goes

Errebo was part of an economic development board that originally pursued the project.

“The only question in my mind was whether the public was behind it,” he said. “We had information meetings with landowners and citizens in the county. And they were overwhelmingly in favor of pursuit of the project.”

Under terms of their development deal, Lincoln and Ellsworth counties are expected to reap a combined annual payment of $3,000 a megawatt of power generated, for 10 years.

The payment is in lieu of taxes, since the project is exempt from state and local property taxes. In Lincoln County, the estimated take is $5 million over the 10 years, Errebo said.

“We’re going to put that in the Windpower Economic Benefit Fund,” he said. “We’ll keep it out of the general fund. The county will utilize some of it, the school will utilize some of it. The economic development group will utilize some. And also some nonprofit groups.”

The county plans to accrue the principal and only use the interest and dividends for the benefit of those groups. The fund will be governed by an appointed board that determines where and how best to use the money, he said.

Predictable, stable

“Our outlook for the future is we’re going to have this facility for a very long time,” Toni Volpe, president and chief executive officer for Enel North America, said after Sebelius spoke. “Our production of energy is going to be stable and predictable from day one.”

What sets Enel apart, Volpe said, is that it’s not only an investor in all sorts of alternative energy — wind, geothermal, hydroelectric and biomass, for example — it’s an owner and operator, and it strives to be a good corporate neighbor.

The facility is expected to have a lifespan of at least 20 years before redevelopment of the site is necessary, said Robert Freeman, chief executive officer of Tradewind.

We believe in Boone

Lately, the wind energy movement has had a champion in billionaire oil man T. Boone Pickens. Pickens favors wind farm development together with more widespread use of compressed natural gas to cut America’s consumption of foreign oil.

“There is a movement to these kind of facilities,” Freeman said. “He’s in the mix, and he’s part of the whole movement. I think what he’s doing is great. Because he comes from the oil and gas industry, and is politically a pretty conservative guy, I think he makes a pretty interesting spokesperson for the industry.

“I personally believe his plan makes a lot of sense,” Freeman said. “Particularly because it looks like we may have a whole lot more natural gas in this country we can access than people knew, even a year ago. It starts to make some sense, I think, that we start to rely more heavily on natural gas and wind.”

And an additional wind story – this about the dedication for the Horizon Wind Farm, Meridian Way, up near Concordia in Cloud County.

Note, the average payment per turbine (these are three megawatt turbines) is $4,000 to $8,000 per year.

To highlight my favorite quote, from Empire Electric’s Bradley Beecher (by next year, Empire will get 15% of its energy from wind): “The more wind energy we buy, the less natural gas we burn,” he said.

Company finds one of the answers for the energy crisis is Blowing in the wind
10/8/2008

By TIM UNRUH

CONCORDIA — A big vinyl banner tied to a wind turbine blade was coming down when farmer Kurt Kocher pulled in with his tractor and wheat drill.

Most of the 200 people attending the ribbon cutting for the Meridian Way Wind Farm had signed the blade that will be installed at the wind farm in southern Cloud County, and Kocher wanted to etch his name in history.

The $340 million farm is being built by Houston-based Horizon Wind Energy.

“It’s a big day for Horizon, a big day for the community and for north-central Kansas,” Kocher said.

A stiff, cool wind flapped the large tent where a small country band and cowboy poet flavored the event.

“It’s windy, but it’s a wind farm,” said Jim Roberts, Concordia, Horizon senior project manager. “We’re very proud to be bringing this farm to Cloud County.”

The turnout was a celebration for the Cloud County community. It represented a positive result to Rep. Elaine Bowers, R-Concordia, who recalled the perils of Kansas gales while riding her bicycle and throwing the discus at track meets.

Now the wind is producing jobs and wealth in her district, which includes part of the Smoky Hills wind farm in Lincoln and Ellsworth counties.

“Just let that Kansas wind blow,” Bowers said.

The state ranks third in wind potential and 12th in development, said Antonio Coutinho, Horizon’s chief energy officer.

“There’s a lot of room to grow,” he said. “This reduces the fuel dependency of the country and stabilizes the (power) cost to consumers.”

By the end of this week or early next week, the first wind turbines will begin turning in Cloud County, Roberts said, but it will be November before the farm is producing electricity for Meridian’s two customers — Westar Energy, Topeka, and Empire District Electric, Joplin, Mo.

Producing 201 megawatts

When all 67 turbines are operational by the end of this year, the farm will have the capacity to produce 201 megawatts — 96 megawatts for Westar and 105 for Empire — enough to power 60,000 average Kansas homes.

Because fossil fuels are not needed to make electricity at the wind farm, the amount of pollution prevented is like taking 60,000 cars of the road, according to company literature.

The construction phase, from late March through the end of this year, produced about 200 jobs, and the wind farm will create at least 20 full-time jobs. A training program is ongoing at Cloud County Community College, Concordia, Roberts said, and students are being offered full-time jobs with Vestas, the Danish company that makes the turbines for Horizon. He said Horizon also will hire from the program.

“It seems like yesterday when we stood in the cold and wind at the groundbreaking,” said Johnita Crawford, chairwoman of the Cloud County Commission.

Several Meridian wind turbines are located on the Kocher family’s property, one of 65 landowners who are leasing their land for turbines, access roads, transmission line corridors and wind access (requiring unobstructed wind access).

Money for landowners

The project will produce significant income for some landowners or supplemental income for others, Kocher said, depending on how many turbines are on their land.

Payments can range from $4,000 to $8,000 a year for each turbine, Roberts said.

John Peckham, Salina, bought land to hunt on in early 2007, and ended up leasing one turbine site to the wind farm. Six or seven more leases would be nice, he said, but “the one (lease) is going to subsidize my hunting.”

The turbines are kind of like having an oil well on your property, Kocher said. “I bet it’ll be cleaner.”

There is no downside, said Ken Anderson, Fort Scott, who leased a spot of a pasture to the project.

“It’s great. It supports the environment and it’s good income we can count on year after year,” Anderson said.

Part of the portfolio

Wind energy should be part of any electric company’s “portfolio,” balanced with other generation from fuels such as coal, natural gas and nuclear, said Bill Moore, Westar president and chief executive officer.

With renewable energy from wind farms near Medicine Lodge and in Wichita County, Westar will be buying 300 megawatts of wind power, he said. To meet Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ recommendation that Kansas reach the level of producing 10 percent of its energy needs from wind by 2010, Westar would need to purchase a total of 500 megawatts.

Moore said the company is not committed to any more wind power purchases.

Fossil fuels are necessary to meeting growing demand, said Bradley Beecher, Empire vice president and chief operations officer. Next year, wind will produce 15 percent of the energy that Empire sends to the power grid.

“The more wind energy we buy, the less natural gas we burn,” he said.

Key to the industry development is the federal production tax credit that lowered the cost to purchase wind power by $18 a megawatt, Beecher said. He would not say what Empire is paying for wind power.

“Without that, we wouldn’t have bought it,” he said.

Congress just continued the tax credit for another year, which is important for wind, Moore said, because it makes the cost compatible with other forms of energy. But, he said, the tax credit should linger longer before needing more federal approval.

“We need an energy policy that will give us an idea of where we should be headed,” he said. “Just renewing it a year at a time isn’t the way to do it.”

— Maril Hazlett, www.climateandenergy.org