The answer, my friend … Colorado to be home to fifth-largest wind farm in nation

The most promising source of electricity in the new millennium is as old as civilization, born more than 5,000 years ago when ancient Egyptians figured out that wind could fill a sail and propel a boat across water.

By Joey Bunch, Denver Post Environment Writer

When the West was settled, windmills dotted the landscape, pumping water to gold mines and farms.

"We’ve used windmills on ranches for hundreds of years," said John Stulp, a farmer, rancher and Prowers County commissioner who is the chief political backer of a wind farm near Lamar.

Many scientists, politicians and businessmen see wind power as an important supplement to Colorado’s electrical supply.

Colorado House Speaker Lola Spradley goes further, calling it "a part of the vision for Colorado’s future."

As futuristic as it seems to be in the quest to loosen the grip of oil and gas on modern life, the science of wind power has changed very little since the first windmills sprang up centuries ago.

The process starts with wind – how hard it blows, how often and how it greets the blades of the turbine. see graphic

Wind is the product of sunlight heating the surface of the Earth unevenly. Warmer air rises and cooler air tumbles in to replace it, causing the dance behind everything from gentle breezes to raging tornadoes.

Turbines harness the power in the air. As the breeze sweeps over a turbine’s blade, pressure forms on the downwind side, thrusting it upward like a propeller, and much the same way wind over an airplane’s wing lifts the aircraft off the ground.

For most modern commercial turbines, blades are attached horizontally on a skinny pole, 100 feet tall or more.

The third part of the turbine – the gearbox behind the blades, called the nacelle – is where the real action takes place, where the power of motion grinds out electricity.

The nacelle not only harnesses the wind but amps it up as well. If the wind speed doubles, for example, the leverage of the gears can generate eight times as much power.

In short, the wind spins the blades, which cranks a shaft, which turns gears that generate electricity.

Utilities can collect the power of windmills, funnel it onto the normal grid (a vast network of wires and power stations) and mix it with the electricity produced by gas, coal, dams or nuclear reactors.

"The homeowner has no idea where his electrons come from," said Steve Ponder, a regulatory affairs director for FPL Energy, the nation’s largest developer and supplier of wind power, with 28 wind farms in 10 states and an appetite to expand into Colorado.

Wind-energy providers put up dozens, if not hundreds, of turbines in rows on remote locations called wind farms.

Colorado has two significant wind farms: 44 turbines at the Ponnequin wind farm in Weld County near the Wyoming border and 33 turbines at the Peetz wind farm north of Sterling near the Nebraska state line.

Together they generate 64 megawatts of electricity for Xcel Energy, the state’s largest power supplier.

Environmentally conscious consumers can pay Xcel an extra $2.50 for each 100-kilowatt block to get all or part of their electricity from the wind. The average household uses 600 kilowatts of electricity a month from all sources, according to Xcel.

A handful of smaller electrical utilities across the state offer similar deals.

Customers pay extra because companies say they don’t yet have the infrastructure in place to get wind power on their grid as cheaply as gas, coal or hydroelectric.

In the foreseeable future, there is little chance that windmills will put other forms of electrical production out of business.

The main reason: The wind doesn’t blow all the time.

"Wind will never be a base-load fuel," Ponder said.

Studies, however, can reliably show utilities how much wind to expect, on average, in any region of the country over a given period of time, he said. Utilities then can balance that amount of electricity from the wind to mix in with supplies from coal, gas, dams or nuclear reactors.

Colorado will get a major boost in its wind-energy supply later this year after 108 turbines go up on an isolated ranch in southeastern Colorado. The wind farm will be built and operated by General Electric.

The Prowers County site will become the fifth-largest wind farm in the country, cranking out enough power to serve 75,000 homes annually.

Xcel Energy already has agreed to purchase the wind farm’s entire output.

Colorado is an ideal location for more such wind power projects, said Ponder.

Studies show the Centennial State is the 11th-windiest in the country. The federal Department of Energy believes that if the state harnessed all its steady breezes and gusts, it could supply the electricity residents need in a year eight times over.

"The real growth industry in Colorado right now is wind energy," Ponder said. "You have a resource that is incredibly under-developed."

Currently, the state gets just 1 percent of its power supply from two wind farms in the state, with 83 percent from coal, 12.5 percent from natural gas and the rest from dams, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

John Nielson, the Energy Project director for the Land and Water Fund of the Rockies, said wind’s share in the mix could easily leap to more than 10 percent.

"Right now, it’s certainly the most cost-competitive renewable energy," he said. "And in a lot of cases, it’s competitive now with coal and gas."

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