Wind Power News: North Dakota
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These news and opinion items are gathered by National Wind Watch to help keep readers informed about developments related to industrial wind energy. They are the products of the organizations or individuals noted.
PSC looks into wind farm plan changes
The North Dakota Public Service Commission is looking into whether it should penalize the owner of an Ashley wind farm for changing locations of transmission line towers without approval.
Tatanka Wind Power LLC, which is building a 180-megawatt wind farm on the North Dakota-South Dakota border, received a PSC permit for placement of transmission line towers last year. The transmission line is in North Dakota.
But last month, the company’s consultant, Ronald Peterson of Minneapolis, notified the . . .
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N.D. regulators: wind projects may endanger cranes
Facing a huge increase in North Dakota’s number of wind towers, state regulators promised to pay close attention to the projects’ potential effects on the whooping crane, a huge bird in danger of extinction.
“We generally aren’t happy until you are,” Public Service Commissioner Kevin Cramer told Jeffrey Towner, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife field supervisor in Bismarck, and Terry Ellsworth, an agency wildlife biologist, at a commission meeting Tuesday.
Most of North Dakota’s wind energy projects . . .
Wind project threatens coal country
A Minnesota utility said it’s planning its own mega wind farm in Oliver County, meaning Oliver and Morton counties could some day be home to as many as 1,000 new wind turbines across the hilltops.
At the same time the turbines are capturing mile after mile of wind, they could cover up substantial coal reserves along that southern stretch of Coal Country.
North American Coal Corp. plans to file a new mine permit this fall for a . . .
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PSC approves modified power line route
The Public Service Commission has approved a re-routing of a new high voltage power line — to avoid some residences and a farm and ranch operation north of Fargo.
Some residents of the Rush River Township in Cass County — near Argusville — wanted the line moved away from houses. And one farmer-rancher — Edward Olson of Argusville — wanted the line moved more than two miles from his operation — because of concerns about how . . .
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Fish and Wildlife Service seeks protection for Whooping Cranes from turbines
Fish and Wildlife Service officials plan to meet with the state Public Service Commission next week to talk about protecting endangered whooping cranes from a growing number of wind projects.
Fish and Wildlife Service supervisor Jeffrey Towner agency officials also plan to meet in Denver with 30 wind company representatives.
The FPL Energy company plans to install 667 turbines in Oliver and Morton counties starting in 2010. The counties are on a route used by rare whooping . . .
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Wind farm's possible affect on whoopers causes worry
A world’s-largest scale wind farm proposed for Oliver and Morton counties could snare and kill a migrating endangered species.
Whooping cranes pass through those counties flying between northern Canada and Texas and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is concerned that an explosion of wind farms up and down the Great Plains’ flyway will further endanger the rare birds.
The agency charged with protecting the enormous white cranes will meet with the Public Service Commission next week . . .
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Argusville couple remains fearful of power line plan
The Public Service Commission will decide in less than a week whether to approve a 4.5-mile reroute of Minnkota Power Cooperative’s wind power transmission line near the farm of Edward and Jeanne Olson, rural Argusville, N.D.
The Olsons testified at a PSC hearing Tuesday that the company’s proposed reroute isn’t satisfactory and still brings the high-voltage line adjacent to a rented section where they graze their prize Angus cattle.
They fear their customers will blame stray voltage . . .
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Wind development intrusion
A North Dakota Public Service commissioner says a huge new wind energy project will show how much North Dakotans support wind development.
FPL Energy intends to invest two billion dollars in a wind farm in Oliver and Morton counties. It will be capable of generating up to a thousand megawatts of electricity.
The project includes construction of 667 wind towers. FPL Energy hopes to finish it by the end of 2012.
Public Service commissioner Kevin Cramer . . .
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Wind developer plans $2 billion North Dakota project
North Dakota’s dominant wind energy developer is planning a $2 billion project capable of generating 1,000 megawatts of electricity — triple the amount of wind power the state now produces.
FPL Energy LLC disclosed its plans Thursday in a letter of intent filed with North Dakota’s Public Service Commission, which will hold hearings on the siting of the project once the utility files its formal application next year.
“It almost takes?…?your breath away to think of how . . .
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$300M wind farm planned for southeast North Dakota
A wind developer plans to build a 150-megawatt wind farm for an estimated cost of $300 million in southeast North Dakota’s Dickey County.
FPL Energy, the nation’s leading wind developer, wants to begin construction on July 1, with completion by December 2009, Scott Scovill, a project director for the firm, said Tuesday.
If approved by regulators, the wind farm would sprawl over 20 square miles of leased private land at a site about 15 miles northwest of . . .
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