If approved, OG&E will achieve its goal of quadrupling the amount of wind power on its system by 2012. The new wind farm, named ‘Crossroads’, is expected to come online in the second half of 2011, the company said.
Howard Motley, vice president of regulatory affairs at OG&E, said: “The Crossroads project represents the achievement of a very lofty goal. It also provides another opportunity to add significant renewable generation at the lowest reasonable cost to OG&E customers. By the time the new wind farm is in its third year of operation, it will provide a net savings to all of our residential, municipal and business customers. We project schools will benefit even sooner.”
The new $400m wind farm, to be developed by RES Americas, will be located in Dewey county. It will have 86 Siemens turbines rated 2.3MW each and will connect with OG&E’s new Windspeed transmission line, which was energized on March 31.
OG&E set a goal of quadrupling its wind power production in 2008 when it had 170MW of wind energy on its system. The company now has 270MW of wind power capacity and will add 280MW from projects slated for completion later this year. With the addition of the Crossroads project, the company will have approximately 751MW of wind generation capacity.
