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Monday, August 25, 2008
Environment - "Porter County braces for future in wind power"
Charles M. Bartholomew reports in the Gary Post-Tribune:
VALPARAISO -- Porter County is in the path of a new industrial wind that's blowing across northern Indiana, driven by funding from foreign-based energy companies.From an AP story today in the Chicago Tribune:Officials here are feeling the breeze in the wake of a statewide energy conference in June, according to Raymond S. Joseph in the Porter County Plan Commission office.
Porter County was one of 15 in the state cited at this week's Pinney Purdue Agriculture Field Day by Benton County extension educator Jimmie Bricker as having contacted his office to learn more about his county's wind turbine ordinance that is serving as a model for the rest of the state.
"I'm working on an ordinance using Benton County as a template, with bits and pieces from all over the country," Joseph said Thursday.
Bricker said Benton County is currently the site of two wind farm developments by BP Alternative Energy of Texas and California-based Orion Energy Systems that will raise about 650 of the three-bladed wind turbines above the county where less than 10,000 people live on 400 square miles.
Most of the eight energy companies he has dealt with are American subsidiaries of companies in Germany, Spain and other parts of Europe, which is where many of the makers of wind turbine parts are located, he said.
"The Benton County ordinance isn't as specific as I'd like. It's designed for large facilities. I'd like ours to address (smaller) commercial facilities, like the one near Indianapolis that's supplying 60 percent of the power for a warehouse operation," Joseph said.
He said he returned from the June 17 and 18 conference set on writing wind turbine zoning rules for Porter County after seeing a climate map of the state that put the southern townships square in the path of steady prevailing winds.
"It's coming. Porter County is prime," he said.
He said he also found phone messages from at least three energy companies seeking information on what the county could offer and might require of a wind farm development.
"One of them, Trade Wind from Kansas, is looking at 1,000 acres in Porter County, extending into LaPorte County," Joseph said.
At the Purdue Field Day, a LaCrosse-area farmer indicated Trade Wind had approached landowners there. Bricker advised him and his neighbors to form a group and get a lawyer, of which there are a growing number who specialize in wind farms, to negotiate the best deal.
LACROSSE, Ind. - A Kansas company that's considering building two wind farms in northwest Indiana will erect a wind-monitoring tower in LaPorte County within the next month.Readers may recall this ILB entry from last week, quoting a NYT story headed "In Rural New York, Windmills Can Bring Whiff of Corruption."Trade Wind Energy of Lenexa, Kan., will put up the tower, 197 feet high and 6 inches in circumference, outside LaCrosse to monitor wind speeds at various heights 24 hours a day for about two years.
The testing will determine if there's enough wind to warrant building a wind farm that might produce 200 megawatts per hour, said Paul Smith, a leasing specialist with Trade Wind Energy. The monitoring tower will be on a site that's leased.
"We believe there is. We've been studying this area now for eight months," Smith said. * * *
The state's first commercial power station fueled by the wind, the 130-megawatt Benton County Wind Farm about 60 miles south of Gary, went online in May. It generates enough power to light 43,000 homes.
Another Benton County wind farm, the 750-megawatt Fowler Ridge Wind Farm, will be one of the nation's largest when complete. A 400-megawatt first stage is expected to begin operating later this year.
At least four other Indiana wind farms are in the planning stages.
A 2006 study by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that Indiana's winds could produce at least 40,000 megawatts of electricity, or more than twice the state's current generating capacity.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 25, 2008 01:10 PM
Posted to Environment