Turbine towers to pop up

BY MIKE HELENTHAL

DANVILLE June 25, 2009 10:34 pm

— Officials from four “wind farm” companies say residents can expect to see dozens of turbine towers popping up across Vermilion County in the next three years.
And possibly hundreds by the time the projects are completed.
The officials, speaking during presentations at Vermilion Advantage’s annual meeting, all indicated their companies had completed preliminary studies and land transactions, and were close to connecting to the power grid to sell the electricity generated.
“It’s going to consist of 134 turbines and there should be four towers up by the end of the year,” said Brian Roeder of Illinois-based EcoEnergy.
The company expects to eventually expand that farm, located on the Vermilion-Edgar County border, to 134 turbine towers producing 200 megawatts by 2012.
There is fast-moving activity on the north end of the county as well.
“We actually started leasing land in Rossville about a year ago,” said Adrian Higginbotham of Houston-based Element Mar-kets, which also markets and trades fuel commodities and credits. The company leased 4,500 acres of land here in 2008 and has already conducted most of the testing needed for connecting to the grid. He said the company expects final tests to be run this summer and an interconnection announcement by January. The towers are already being designed.
“We’ve been pretty quiet because we didn’t know if we had a project until this spring,” said Higginbotham. “We’re well on the road to getting our permits come this fall.”
Jeff Veaszie of Chicago-based Ivenergy said his company could be the quickest to market with a “commercial operation date” of 2010 for its California Ridge project that encompasses 25,000 acres. It will likely eventually produce 200 megawatts of power from 133 turbines.
Dwight Farber of Horizon energy said his company is close to going on-grid with several wind farm operations across the Midwest. He said work in Vermilion County would likely start in 2011, and a multi-phase plan will over time add enough towers for 300 megawatts of power.
“The wind data (here) has been excellent,” he said, noting the company’s use of test towers during the past 18 months on a tract of land that runs through Champaign, Douglas, Edgar and Vermilion counties. In Vermilion, the location is in the Allerton/Sidell area, and the company already has an operation wind farm east of Bloomington.
“It’s truly a project you can’t do by yourself,” Farber said. “You have to have the whole community engaged in this.”
All of the company representatives credited Vermilion Advantage’s Todd Lee and the county board for getting a wind-use ordinance passed last year.
Lee, director of business development and government relations, said he saw the need for the ordinance after inquiries from wind-farming companies had increased.
“They didn’t know what the rules were,” he said, adding the county board worked hard to pass a model ordinance in just two months. “It was something that was very workable for the community and very workable for the companies.”
Farber fielded audience questions, including one over the economic viability of the projects if they had to operate without government subsidies.
He responded, while tax credits are used for 10 years (13 with earmarks in the stimulus bill designed to promote wind power) because of high startup costs, the projects would produce long-term profit because of low “input” costs. He also noted non-monetary advantages of replacing fossil-fuel energy, as well as taxes and jobs produced from the project. He mentioned electric-ity rates could be positively affected, though he did not provide details.
“We get a tremendous return on the life of the project,” he said.
He admitted to another questioner that storage of electricity produced is a major issue facing the industry since no technology exists to store the quantity of electricity generated by a wind turbine at peak conditions. Power produced is transmitted directly to the grid.