Shifting Little Rock Wind’s Focus to a 50 MW Phase
When formed in July 2008, Little Rock Wind announced plans to develop up to 150 megawatts (MW) of wind energy facilities in Big Stone County. The project was launched with an initial 50 MW transmission interconnect application and various environmental and wind energy screening assessments. The project team’s early and ongoing work also includes continued study of the transmission picture in the Big Stone area.
With our 50MW interconnect request currently in the middle stages of study, and almost 10,000 acres of land rights secured, we have decided to focus our immediate efforts on the first, 50MW phase of our project while we continue to monitor transmission developments in the area.
From a practical standpoint this simply means we will be shifting more energy and focus on completing land rights for the 50MW project footprint and moving forward with early stage permitting and layout activities which we might otherwise not have undertaken until we had secured a majority of our full 150 MW project footprint. We feel this approach is in the project’s best interests as we can concentrate on solid, “known” core project attributes already in place for the 50MW phase and move that portion along more efficiently. Of all the development pieces needed to build a commercial wind farm, from wind assessment, land rights, and environmental and permitting studies, interconnecting to the electrical grid is one of the most difficult.
To achieve interconnection, all wind projects need to undergo an intensive, lengthy transmission study process to determine the project’s impacts on the grid. In relatively sparsely populated areas such as Big Stone County, existing transmission infrastructure can often be modest, thus making the process of identifying transmission solutions all the more challenging and time consuming. In addition, interconnection is probably the one key piece that is the least controlled by the developer. However, we are not alone in this challenge – access to transmission is one of the most well-known and discussed challenges facing the wind industry today.
And oddly, there is still some hope. There are significant drivers in place behind the growth of renewable energy, and given this well recognized transmission problem, there is also a lot of visibility, time, effort and money going into identifying and implementing solutions. From CapX 2020 to ITC’s 3000 mile Greenpower Express, to the Upper Midwest Transmission Development Initiative, and all the strongadvocacy work being done by Wind on the Wires, transmission solutions are being identified. While too soon to predict how these may specifically impact Little Rock Wind, it does seem to indicate a positive direction for future developments.
While we have not yet identified our specific solution for our full 150 MW of power generation, we are working closely with our transmission consultants and various advocacy groups to identify and evaluate solutions. In the meantime, we have a very viable 50 MW project phase to move forward. In addition to the significant land rights we have secured for this phase, the Big Stone County area has a very strong wind resource.
Because of the foresight of Big Stone Wind, LLC investors, an 80-meter meteorological tower was installed in November of 2007, and it now has collected well over the benchmark one year of data required to make accurate predictions of the area’s wind resource. This puts us ahead of the normal development schedule in this regard, providing important data for financial institutions and utilities who may have a potential interest in our project. An analysis of our measured wind resource indicates an average wind speed of 8.0 meters per second, making Little Rock Wind one of the highest wind speed projects in National Wind’s development pipeline.
We will keep you up to date as we progress with our 50 MW phase, and please feel free to contact our field specialist, Jesse Hopkins-Hoel, or our developers, Bill Smeaton or Travis Moen, if you have any questions.