Although Xcel Energy has been in the wind farm business since 1998, the wind project deal between Xcel Energy and Vestas (one of the top three wind turbine manufacturers in the world) announced on April 12th to a group of executives from Vestas, their suppliers and members of the American Wind Energy Association, will be the first wind project that Xcel Energy will own.
The deal, which still requires approval from the Public Utility Commission, will be built with 300 wind turbines supplied by Vestas, a Danish company with four production plants in Colorado. The average American monthly consumption of energy is 10,980 kWh per year (8,040 kWh in Colorado). Each of these wind turbines produce approximately 8,760,000 kWh per year. So each wind turbine can power approximately 800 homes per year (1,100 homes in Colorado) or approximately 240,000 homes for the entire site.
You may have seen a number of wind turbines as you drive to Cheyenne. There are 44 turbines just east of I-25 and just south of the Colorado-Wyoming border. Xcel Energy spokesperson, Mark Stutz, says these first-generation turbines ceased operations on Dec. 31, 2015, as they had reached their live expectancy and it was no longer economically viable to maintain them due to their relatively small size. As Mark puts it, wind farms work better on the plains versus the mountains to avoid air turbulence. When deciding the location of a farm, Xcel Energy and wind developers look at several economic and electrical system models and takes in consideration the distance transmitting the electricity to population/load centers. Colorado is part of the western grid and could conceivably transmit electricity to other parts of the grid throughout the western United States. Beyond providing clean energy to the grid, wind projects only utilize up to 5 percent of the landowner’s property, therefore farmers and ranchers are able to continue to utilize their property in other productive uses.
Why is Xcel Energy doing this? Starting with the passage in 2004, the Colorado Renewable Standard, which said in part, that the state’s largest utilities had to obtain 3 percent of their electricity from renewable energy resources by 2007 and 10 percent by 2015. By 2020, Xcel Energy will have to obtain 30 percent from renewable sources. When you and I receive electricity from Xcel Energy, however, that electricity is co-mingled with other sources. Once electricity is generated (whether from wind, solar, coal or gas), it all provides the same quality of power.
The U.S. renewable energy industry got a boost on December 18 of 2015 when Congress voted to extend the wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC) and Investment Tax Credit (ITC). Amaury Laporte, Communications Director for the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), called this “a huge deal for wind power” and said the extension of the PTC alone will likely result in “the installation of almost twice as much wind capacity in the U.S. as would otherwise have been the case between 2016 and 2020.” Laporte added that the extensions may actually result in less wind capacity coming online in 2016, due to the five-year extension giving developers more time to start projects.
According to data published recently by the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) and the US Energy Information Administration, the United States continued to lead the world in terms of wind energy production during 2015. The annual US wind market reached 8.6 GW in 2015, thanks to a strong fourth quarter which saw more than 5 GW installed, bringing the country’s cumulative total up past 74 GW.