40,000acre Windfarm Proposal For Iowa

Northern Iowa could have one of the nation's largest wind farms by 2008. Iowa Winds LLC wants to build a 200- to 300-megawatt farm covering about 40,000 acres in Franklin County.
A county zoning board will consider approving permits for the $200 million project next month.

"It's something new and renewable,'' said Amber Schwarck, a spokeswoman for the Iowa Falls-based company. "It's great for national security, so we can start depending on ourselves and the wind.''

Iowa ranks third in the nation in wind energy behind Texas and California, according to the American Wind Energy Association. The Franklin County Wind Farm would help Iowa keep pace with those states and create 30 to 40 technical jobs maintaining turbines, said Schwarck. A pay scale was unavailable.


SOURCE:
LiveScience.com

I think this is a great idea, I hope it go's through.


Comments, Opinions?

Great news for Iowa and the nation! I hope more places can do the same.
Windy places in California certainly take advantage of the wind, and it's a lot better to look at the windmills than a belching power plant, whether it's belching smoke or nuclear particles.

great news. i love iowa.

Originally posted by iori_komei
I think this is a great idea, I hope it go's through.

Comments, Opinions?

200 to 300 MW isn't much compared to the (ie) 800 MW of a nuke...BUT...
I hope it is as well...and I'm talking from the experience in my area. Windfarms are a relatively new technology, but has really old roots, (I was born a Dutchman).
The efficiency of the newer turbines is increasing, though, and maintenance costs, which have been a barrier, are decreasing.

This is a great subject, Iori_komei

There is a huge amount of construction happening in Canada in relation to wind farms. There are still active detractors, mainly about 'set-backs' from roads and noise pollution, but, on the whole, very acceptable to the people around here (where I live). All told, there are 1,049 MW of installed capacity (country-wide) as in the following link...

www.canwea.ca...

Huron - Kincardine 2002/11 5x Vestas V80 9,000 Huron Wind
Kingsbridge 1 2006/04 22x Vestas 1.8 MW 39,600 EPCOR

note...these are the turbines in my area

And, from the 'wind energy' link on the above page;

Wind energy is among the fastest growing renewable energy technologies in the world.

Increasing by approximately 32% a year globally over the last five years, wind energy has proven to be a clean, abundant and completely renewable source of power. It is economical to produce and very reliable.

Not surprisingly, wind energy is certain to play an important role in the future of electricity generation.

In the past few years, wind energy production in Canada has grown to 1 049 MW. While this is encouraging, Canada still has vast untapped wind resources available. In fact, there is the potential in Canada for wind energy to meet a full 20% of all our electricity needs.