Sunflower's Wind Resources
Sunflower's involvement with wind power can be traced back to the early 1990s with our participation in the Kansas Electric Utility Research Program (KEURP). Sunflower along with other Kansas utilities researched the wind power potential for Kansas by mapping most of the state's wind energy sites.
Sunflower's
member cooperatives, through Mid-Kansas Electric
Company, LLC, purchase 50 megawatts of wind energy from
the Gray County Wind farm located near Montezuma,
Kansas.
The site, owned and operated by FPL Energy, consists of
170 Vestas V-47 wind turbines. Each turbine tower is 217
feet high, with blades 77 feet long, and a generating
capacity of 600kW. The Gray County Wind Farm became
fully operational in December 2001. Its construction
cost was $100 million.
Sunflower's newest investment in wind energy is the
Smoky Hills wind project. This facility, located along
I-70, 25 miles west of Salina, involves a 20-year
agreement to purchase more than 50 megawatts of wind
energy from the project. In addition to Sunflower,
Midwest Energy, Inc., and the Kansas City, Kansas Board
of Public Utilities will purchase power from the
project.
TradeWind Energy is developing this project for Enel Energy, the largest utility in Italy. The project will be completed in December 2007. The project (phase I) will only take approximately 60 acres of land out of service to build, including all land for roads, turbine foundations, and maintenance buildings. The rest of the approximately 10,000 acres leased for the project (Phase I) will still be farmed and ranched exactly as it was before the project was constructed.
The 56 Vestas 1.8 megawatt turbines included in Phase 1 of the project will sit atop 80 meter (262 feet) towers and feature blades of approximately 130 feet.
With the completion of this project, Sunflower will have accomplished Governor Sebelius' goal of 10% renewable energy production by 2010.