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September 17, 2007 | Electric co-ops dedicate Missouri's first wind farmView photos from the Bluegrass Ridge Wind Farm Contact : Nancy Southworth Rural electric cooperative members celebrated the opening of Missouri's first wind farm today at the 10,000-acre site near King City, Mo. Cooperatives taking part in today's festivities rely on Springfield-based wholesaler Associated Electric Cooperative (AECI) to supply a growing system of electric cooperatives with 850,000 farms, homes and businesses; 679,000 cooperative members are in Missouri. About 475 attended the celebration of local renewable energy development where cooperative members were joined by project partners and many state and federal legislators and officials. Keynote speaker U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill said it was no surprise that rural electric cooperative members are working to help bring clean, renewable wind power to Missouri. "I'd pick a fight with anybody in Washington who wants to argue that Missouri farmers aren't the best environmentalists in the world," McCaskill said. "Nobody wants to protect the land and the water and the air more than Missouri farmers." Project developer Tom Carnahan, president of Wind Capital Group, opened the ceremony and thanked the rural electric cooperatives for helping make Missouri's first wind farm a reality. Carnahan said when he approached the co-ops' power supplier, Associated Electric, back in 2005 it recognized the importance of the wind power project. "They understood that energy diversity and protecting the environment was something that was important to their members and important to this country. The rural electric cooperatives transformed rural America back in the 1930s and you're doing it again today with the way that you're working on these wind projects," he said. AECI general manager and CEO Jim Jura discussed the cooperative systems' need for new power sources as it works to meet growing electricity demand among its members. "This is the first wind energy that we're bringing into our system, and we're very excited about it," Jura said. "The biggest challenge for our system is how do we meet our load growth, and we're looking at a wide range of activities and generation resources, as well as other demand-side resources such as energy efficiency, to meet those demands." "There was a view at one time that Missouri didn't have viable wind sites," Jura said. "It's a remarkable testament to Tom Carnahan, to John Deere, and to the co-op organization and everybody who worked on this that we have viable projects that are bringing renewable wind energy to our homes and farms across the state of Missouri." Stepping up as the first Missouri utility to purchase home-grown wind power, AECI will buy for 20 years all the electricity produced by three wind farms in northwest Missouri. The state's first wind farms are the result of a partnership among AECI and its member cooperatives; Carnahan's St. Louis-based Wind Capital Group and John Deere Wind Energy, a unit of Deere & Co. The first wind farm, Bluegrass Ridge, is located in Gentry County. Two additional facilities, the Cow Branch and Conception wind farms, are located in Atchison and Nodaway counties, respectively. These facilities are expected to be complete by year-end 2007. Combined, the three wind farms will be capable of producing 157 megawatts, enough power for about 45,000 homes. Praised for voluntarily becoming a leader and partner in renewable energy development in Missouri, AECI was nominated by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and selected "2006 Wind Co-op of the Year" by the U.S. Department of Energy. Missouri-based wind power provides a reasonably priced, green and renewable source of electricity; displaces more expensive natural-gas-based generation; spurs economic growth in rural Missouri; and helps meet growing electricity needs among cooperative members. Forecasts show continued growth of about 100 megawatts per year for the next 10 years among AECI's members, the equivalent of adding about 30,000 homes annually. In addition to collaborating on Missouri's first wind power projects, AECI is taking additional steps to protect the environment as it meets growing energy needs. The cooperative is aggressively researching energy efficiency as another resource to help meet electricity demand and continues to improve air quality by investing in new emissions control technologies at its existing power plants. AECI also recently received the U.S. Office of Surface Mining's highest award for its innovative efforts to reclaim mined land in north-central Missouri. Associated Electric Cooperative Inc. is owned by and provides wholesale power to six regional and 51 local electric cooperative systems in Missouri, southeast Iowa and northeast Oklahoma that serve more than 850,000 customers. AECI's mission is to provide an economical and reliable power supply and support services to its members. AECI is a Touchstone Energy Cooperative, www.aeci.org. An Equal Opportunity Employer M/F/D/V ### Photographs from the Sept. 17 dedication are available on AECI's Web site, www.aeci.org in the News Media section, under 2007 news releases: http://www.aeci.org/NewsReleases2007.aspx. Released: 17 September 2007 |
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