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Green Light for Wind-Energy Project

A plan to build the largest wind farm in New England has received final approval.

Monday, January 07, 2008

By Brittany Sauser

On January 3, Maine's Land Use Regulation Commission approved the final design of the Stetson Wind Project--a 38-turbine wind farm to be built on Stetson Mountain, in Maine's Washington County. The $100 million project is headed by UPC Wind of Newton, MA, and will be the biggest source of wind energy for New England.

An illustration of the Stetson Ridge with wind turbines. Credit: Natural Resources Council of Maine.

The wind farm is expected to generate 57 megawatts of electricity annually, a number comparable to the yearly electricity use of roughly 27,000 Maine households. Each turbine tower will stand 262 feet tall with a blade diameter of 253 feet. Power from the wind farm will flow into the New England Power grid.

A 42-megawatt, 28-turbine wind farm already exists in Mars Hill, ME, but with rising oil prices and the push toward renewable energy sources, the Stetson project proposal received little resistance from residents and lawmakers. Additionally, the largest wind farms in the United States can be found in Texas, California, and the Midwest. According to the American Wind Energy Association's annual U.S. wind-power rankings (as of December 31, 2006), Texas has installed 2,763 megawatts of wind energy, California follows with 2,361, and Iowa with 936.

Overall, the United States ranks third in the world, behind Germany and Spain, with a total installed wind-power capacity of more than 11,600 megawatts.

Tags: renewable energy, wind energy, wind farms

Comments

	Megawatts are a rate robert.hargraves on 01/08/2008 at 3:07 PM
Posts: 11 Avg Rating:	You wrote "The wind farm is expected to generate 57 megawatts of electricity annually". MIT folks should know that magawatts are a rate of energy flow, not an amount of energy. The sentence is nonsense. Rate this comment: (Reply)

	Re: Megawatts are a rate doteman on 02/17/2008 at 4:24 PM
Posts: 6 Avg Rating:	Yeah, this is a technical semantic in the generation industry. What it means is that averaged over the year this wind farm should be good for 57MW of power. Energy generally isn't used to describe the size/rating of a plant. It would also be useful if they quantified the crest factor of the plant (eg, pk/average) power characteristics, which is especially relevant to the economics of a wind plant. Rate this comment: (Reply)

	Re: Megawatts are a rate mtbrown on 03/20/2008 at 6:00 PM
Posts: 2 Avg Rating:	Yes the general megawatt rating does not give the total energy production without a capacity factor to go along. But, the wind industry usually achieves a CF of between .25 and .4. It can be assumed that such a large investment would have a good site to utilize and will be at the higher end of the spectrum. So you could get about 200,000 MWh for this plant. The real factor is what PPA price they got. Wind can sell for as low as $50 per MWh and ive heard of as high as $150. This is likely a high PPA project so it works out well, but the future lies in high altitude projects that can get capacity factors of .9 and up. Rate this comment: (Reply)

	affect birds? ijimmoore on 01/14/2008 at 5:37 PM
Posts: 1	What effect will this have on migratory bird populations? Rate this comment: (Reply)

	Re: affect birds? Swordhors on 02/27/2008 at 3:33 AM
Posts: 1	I think it depends on design. The new streamlined nacelles don't allow perches for raptors etc. Raptors however could be so focused on prey they may not notice. I read a few years ago that migratory birds heading into the offshore British farms just rise up over them and seldom if ever get nailed. There are also noise makers, coloured/striped blades etc that can warn birds. Having said that, one always needs to do local surveys and test to determine effects. Rate this comment: (Reply)

	Re: affect birds? mpatchell on 03/31/2008 at 1:54 AM
Posts: 1	My understanding is that newer wind turbine technologies are significantly less harmful to birds because the blades spin much more slowly. Rate this comment: (Reply)

	Re: affect birds? kelseyk on 03/13/2008 at 3:58 PM
Posts: 1	If the wind turbines are in an ecosystem long enough, bird populations tend to go on unaffected. They're generally not a problem. Rate this comment: (Reply)

	[no subject] skipcjr on 03/15/2008 at 12:12 AM
Posts: 6 Avg Rating:	100 miles north of la california. a new windfarm is going to be built 4500 megawatts. enough to power 3 million homes..up and running in 5 years......the biggest windfarm operating in the us is in texas at about 670 mw......... Rate this comment: (Reply)

Re:
Zantetskuen on 05/20/2008 at 2:46 AM

Posts:
1

Do you have a link for the project you are referring to skipcjr?
Rate this comment:

(Reply)

	Wind barrier system for generate energy wind_barrier_for_generate_energy on 11/11/2008 at 12:13 AM
Posts: 1	Here is a new technology for trapping wind energy in large-scale. Please visit: http://www.geocities.com/newideasfromtelewise/windbarrier.htm http://www.physics-edu.org/tech/wind_barrier_system_for_generating_hydrogen.htm Rate this comment: (Reply)