Through its subsidiary Building Energy Wind Iowa, multi-national renewables IPP, Building Energy, inaugurated its first wind farm in Iowa, which adds up to 30 MW of wind-distribution generation capacity. The project, located north of Des Moines, in Story, Boone, Hardin and Poweshiek counties, will generate approximately 110 GWh per year.
Building Energy recently celebrated operation of its new Iowa wind-farm operations. Energy generated from the 10, 3-MW turbines will help avoid 70,000 tons of CO2 emissions annually.
The wind facility, developed, financed, owned, and operated by Building Energy, consists of 10, 3-MW geared onshore wind turbines, each with a rotor diameter of 125 meters mounted on an 87.5-m steel tower. The energy generated will avoid the emission of about 70,000 tons of CO2 emissions every year, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency methodology, which is equivalent to taking 15,000 cars off the road each year.
The overall investment in the construction of the Iowa distribution generation wind farms amounted to $58 million and it sells its energy and related renewable credits under a bundled, long-term power purchase agreement with a local utility.
Besides the environmental benefits, the wind farm also has advantages for the local community, providing it with clean energy and creating jobs for local Iowans. The project involved more than a hundred of local skilled workers during the construction phase.
Some of those jobs will be also permanent as necessary for the operation and maintenance activities as well as for additional services such as delivery, transportation, spare parts management, landscape mitigation, and further environmental monitoring studies.
Building Energy is present in many U.S. states since 2013 with more than 500 MW of projects under development, spread across different renewable energy technologies.
Filed Under: News, Projects
