OPPD Board Votes to Buy Energy From Wind Farm

OPPD Board Votes to Buy Energy From Wind Farm

Oct 15 - Omaha World - Herald

Omahans and other southeast Nebraskans will be getting more of their electricity next year from a familiar, renewable source -- the wind.

Thursday, the board for the Omaha Public Power District voted to purchase 10 megawatts of energy from a wind farm being built by Nebraska Public Power District.

This will more than triple the amount of electricity that OPPD gets from renewable energy. Renewables, however, account for only about one-half of 1 percent of OPPD's capacity.

OPPD estimates that this addition will provide enough energy to power about 3,100 homes.

Board member John Green said the utility was able to buy into this project because the Legislature agreed to institute a waiver for small experimental projects that serve the public good. State law otherwise requires that utilities use the least costly, most practical source for generating electricity. OPPD lobbied for the change that produced the waiver.

Projects such as these, he said, help Nebraska utilities develop more familiarity with emerging technologies.

Omahan Frances Mendenhall, who has lobbied OPPD to use more wind power, said Thursday's vote was "a good start." The utility needs to do more, she said, to push for changes in state laws that impede the use of renewable energy.

Nebraska, she said, should do as other states have done and require its utilities to generate a given percentage of electricity from renewable energy. A realistic goal, she said, would be to demand that 10 percent of electric power come from renewable energy in the next 10 years.

The wind-generated electricity is expected to cost OPPD about 3.4 cents per kilowatt hour, said Dale Widoe, OPPD vice president, compared to about 3 cents that he estimates electricity from the utility's new coal plant will cost.

The cost of the wind power would be reduced, he said, if Congress were to reauthorize and fully fund a renewable energy incentive that has lapsed. Congress recently reauthorized a related provision for private utilities but has not done so for public utilities.

The incentive, if it gets a green light in Washington, D.C., would trim about a third off the annual $1.2 million cost of the 10 megawatts.

The site that NPPD has selected in north-central Nebraska is one of the state's better locations for wind power. For example, winds there are a little more than twice as reliable, Widoe said, than those near Valley, where OPPD has stationed a turbine.

NPPD is building the $80 million, 60-megawatt farm near Ainsworth, Neb., and hopes to bring it online by late summer 2005.

OPPD serves Omaha and all or parts of 13 southeast Nebraska counties.

For far more extensive news on the energy/power visit: http://www.energycentral.com .