Permit granted for 37K-acre wind farm in SD

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Wed, 16 Jun 2010

A state permit was granted Tuesday for a 37,000-acre wind farm of up to 110 turbines to be built by Basin Electric Power Cooperative in southeast South Dakota. North Dakota-based Basin Electric said when completed, the PrairieWinds SD1 project would replace its PrairieWinds ND1 as the largest wind project owned and operated by an electric cooperative in the United States. Construction of the $363 million, 165MW project will begin when federal permits are obtained, Basin officials said. PrairieWinds ND1 south of Minot, N.D, has 77 turbines producing about 115MWs of electricity.

PrairieWinds SD1 is the second-largest wind farm in South Dakota that is either operating, under construction or has received a state permit, according to the South Dakota Wind Energy Association. The largest is the 300MW Buffalo Ridge project in Brookings and Deuel counties. PrairieWinds would encompass 37,000 acres in parts of Aurora Energy, Jerauld and Brule counties north of White Lake. A 13-mile transmission line would be built to feed the electricity to a Wessington Springs substation and into the electric grid operated by the Western Area Power Administration.

The three Public Utilities Commission members granted the permit and accepted a 24-page agreement between staff and Basin Electric setting out conditions for construction, operation and decommissioning. Commissioner Gary Hanson asked if the transmission line planned for the project could handle expansion. "That's a reasonable assumption, that we would be able to add additional turbines in the future", said Basin Electric's Ron Rebenitsch, the project manager. "The limitation would be where we connect into the grid. Can the grid accept more generation and deliver it perhaps as firm power at that point?"

Basin Electric said a nine-month construction timetable would require a peak of about 250 construction jobs. Ten permanent jobs paying a total of about $550,000 annually would be created once the project is operational. Commissioner Dusty Johnson said payroll and lease income is a benefit beyond providing stable, reliable electricity. "It's safe to say we're talking about several hundred thousand dollars a year in annual lease payments, which is pretty substantial," Johnson said. "I would think those would have quite a positive impact on the economy of that area."