The Garden City Telegram

 Email this story | Add Your Comment  | Read (0) Comments

Gathering celebrates wind farm opening

Published 4/15/2009 in Local News : Business

By STEPHANIE FARLEY

sfarley@gctelegram.com

MARIENTHAL — Rick Mastel stood Tuesday with his feet planted solid to the ground — a little space between them to form a good base — as he leaned back a bit and looked straight up, checking out Westar Energy's latest addition to its energy portfolio.

What Mastel found was one of the 33 wind turbines that towers about 262 feet in the air that makes up the Central Plains Wind Farm, owned and operated by Westar. Mastel, site manager for Central Plains, and other staff were on hand to answer questions, give tours and celebrate the wind farm becoming commercially operational, which occurred March 31.

All 33 turbines' rotors were moving in the wind Tuesday — producing what Mastel calls a "swishing sound." The sound is produced from the combination of the western Kansas wind whipping by the blades.

"It's actually the blades cutting the air," he said as he stood by the turbine.

The wind farm was first announced in October 2007. Agreements later were finalized with developers to construct three wind farms in Kansas, totalling about 300 megawatts in wind generation capacity. With wind-generated energy from Central Plains and the other two wind farms, Meridian Way in Cloud County and Flat Ridge in Barber County, Westar could be able to meet the energy needs of about 5 percent of its customers.

"Well, we've done it," Greg Greenwood, vice president, generation construction for Westar, told the crowd gathered Tuesday.

Kansas House Rep. Carl Holmes, R-Liberal, who attended the event, said the Central Plains and Flat Ridge farms have placed Kansas in the "1,000-megawatt club," adding to the state's wind-energy generating capacity of about 1,012 megawatts of commercial, wind-generated electricity.

Not too long ago, Holmes said, in 2001, the state saw its first large-scale wind farm built near Montezuma in Gray County.

A journey

While it was less than two years from the announcement of the wind farm to its fruition, it's been more than seven years for Wichita County Economic Development Director Sharla Krenzel to see the possibility of the county getting a wind farm.

Krenzel made initial contact with Renewable Energy Systems Americas Inc. (RES Americas), which oversaw Central Plains' development and construction, in 2001. She turned to the wind energy company after having no luck recruiting a dairy to the county.

Krenzel started thinking of what industry would be a good fit and that would use the county's existing assets, not use a lot of water and not be greatly affected by the highs and lows of production agriculture. At the time, there wasn't a wind farm in the state. Then the Gray County wind farm was announced, and Krenzel thought that might be the ticket for Wichita County.

She sent an e-mail to 16 wind developers — RES responded that same day to Krenzel's e-mail, which stated western Kansas has a strong wind resource and those in Leoti were interested in exploring the possibility of wind power. In a week's time, RES representatives told Krenzel they wanted to visit the county, and three weeks later, they arrived.

On Tuesday, Krenzel told the group she also remembers RES officials telling her the company had never, at that time, really had a community try to recruit it to build a wind farm.

Now, Krenzel said, she gets contacted all the time by communities asking how to recruit a wind farm. She tells them they need three basic things: a good wind resource, a buyer for the power and transmission line(s), or a way to help transfer or deliver electricity to consumers.

Reaping the benefits

Why recruit a wind farm? Krenzel asked that question Tuesday. According to Westar, Central Plains employed more than 100 workers at the peak of construction, and a full-time staff of seven workers now is employed to monitor and maintain the site.

Since the wind farm's been under construction, Krenzel said, the county's seen a 5.6 percent increase in sales tax revenue from May 2008 to February compared to revenue in May 2007 to February 2008 -- and about a 20 percent increase compared to May 2006 to February 2007.

Then there are the lease payments to landowners, Krenzel said, as well as the jobs the project created and Westar's payment to the county of about $2,500 per megawatt built for 10 years.

And Krenzel's certain there'll be more tangible and intangible benefits from the development, she said.

"We look forward to working with Westar for many years to come," she said.

Krenzel was helped by members of Westar, RES and Vestas-American Wind Technology Inc., which supplied the turbines, as she flipped the switch of a life-sized light switch connected to a mini-turbine — as the switch flipped on, the turbine's blades started rotating, symbolizing the wind farm being operational.

"It's good to see it finally done," Krenzel said of the project, explaining, though, she'd like to see more transmission capability added to the county and surrounding communities.

A downside to the future of wind energy in Kansas, Krenzel said, is Wichita County doesn't have enough transmission capability to continue participating in producing more wind power right now. There's a lot of interest in expanding the size of the project, she said, but the transmission capability is not large enough.

However, Krenzel said, if the proposed Sunflower Electric Power Corp. expansion of two additional coal-fired plants was to move forward, the expansion would add transmission capability.

According to Sunflower, the power produced by the plants could be moved through new 345,000-volt transmission lines stretching form Holcomb into eastern Colorado to interconnect the plants with Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association's transmission system in the western portion of the nationwide electric grid.

Welcome!    

Today's events •  Weekly Events

Submit An Event

Telegram Featured Video