Duke Energy to Construct Its Fifth Wind Farm in Texas

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Scroby Sands Wind Farm

For the second time this month, Duke Energy announced that it will construct a large-scale wind farm in Texas, United States.

Duke Energy Renewables will build, own, and operate the wind farm, which is to have an electricity generation capacity (nameplate capacity) of 202 MW (202,000 kW). This is titled the Los Vientos II Wind Power project and it is to sell its electricity and renewable energy credits to Austin Energy.

The nameplate capacity of a wind farm is the maximum amount of electricity that it can generate. This is not to be confused with the average amount of electricity that it generates.  The average amount of electricity generated is the most important figure because the cost of electricity from power plants is partially and heavily dependent on that.

The average amount of electricity that a wind farm generates is dependent on the average wind speed of the location that the wind farm is situated. In other words, the average amount of electricity generated by a wind farm is completely dependent on the geographic location of the farm. Whenever someone describes a wind farm as 300 MW for example, then that means it generates up to 300 MW, but it is not actually 300.

The company intends to commence construction of the wind farm in December. It intends to complete it and start operating it in 2012. This effort is part of a much larger one to add 770 MW (770 million watts) of wind farms by 2012.

As was the first Los Vientos project, this wind farm will be situated in Willacy County, which is 120 miles south of Corpus Christi, 20 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico.

CPS Energy is to buy all of the electricity from the first phase of the project under the terms of a 25-year power purchase agreement.

Photo Credit: Leo Reynolds
Source: Wind Today

 


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Nicholas Brown

Has a keen interest in physics-intensive topics such as electricity generation, refrigeration and air conditioning technology, energy storage, and geography. His website is: Kompulsa.com.

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