January 20, 2019
Pennsylvania

Packer Twp. slates hearing on wind farm

By Jim Dino | Standard-Speaker | January 20, 2019 | www.standardspeaker.com

A zoning hearing is scheduled for March 6 into the proposal to build a large windmill farm atop Broad Mountain.

The Packer Twp. Zoning Hearing Board will convene at the Weatherly Area Middle School cafeteria to hear a proposal from Algonquin Power, doing business as Liberty Power, to build a 7,000-acre wind farm on Broad Mountain.

The firm is proposing to construct 25 wind turbines with an approximate height of between 480 and 570 feet from the top tip of the rotor blade. The towers themselves will be 344 feet high, with an approximate rotor diameter of 360 to 446 feet, according to Rob Miller, the project manager.

The farm will generate between 80 and 90 megawatts of electricity. Eighty megawatts of electricity would power 64,000 households.

The construction will include a network of access roads, underground electrical collector lines, gravel turbine pads, an operation and maintenance building, a substation and a switching station. The wind turbine generators all will be on private land.

The 34.5-kilovolt electrical connector system will connect each turbine to a proposed substation that will transfer electricity from the project onto the PPL 69-kilovolt transmission network.

Algonquin, or Liberty, owns or has interests in a variety of North American-based contracted wind, solar, hydroelectric and natural gas facilities generating more than 1,500 megawatts of installed capacity.

The distribution group, Liberty Utilities, operates in the United States and provides rate-regulated water, electricity and natural gas utility services to more than 760,000 customers. The transmission group invests in rate-regulated electric transmission and natural gas pipeline systems in the United States and Canada.

Packer Twp. and Nesquehoning borough have formed an electrical power cooperative to buy and sell electricity in bulk to their residents. Other municipalities also can join the cooperative.

Officials of both municipalities have maintained the cooperative has nothing to do with the windmills, but the power they would produce certainly could be purchased by the cooperative.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2019/01/20/packer-twp-slates-hearing-on-wind-farm/