Solar Electrical Power
Tom Budler from MidAmerican
Energy talked about wind-power electric generation in
Two things are needed to
build a wind farm: good wind and good transmission facilities. MidAmerican required one full year of on-site
wind data before considering a building site.
They correlate that with long-term wind records when selecting a location.
Long term access agreements are then
negotiated with farmers. Although
additional space is needed during construction, about one-third of an acre of crop land is needed later for each windmill for the site and
road access.
Most of the wind turbines are General Electric 1.5
Megawatt turbines. Some new Siemens one are 2.3 Megawatts.
The actual generation capacity is roughly 35% of the maximum, due to
periodic calm winds and maintenance. At
the end of the year, MidAmerican will be generating about 748 Megawatts of
electrical wind-power.
The blades are about 200 foot in length and weigh
9,000-10,000 pounds. One type of blade
used by MidAmerican is built with a wood structure
hand-covered with fiberglass. The other
type is built strictly from fiberglass through a
patented process. Most of the blades are built in
MidAmerican receives no State subsidies for wind
power. They prefer to have counties give
them property tax abatements. About
one-third of the cost of installation is funded through
Federal subsidies. Effective planning
for power generation has meant that MidAmerican electric rates have not
increased since 1995.