Wind Turbine Projects Continue to Move Forward

The landscape of northern Boone Counties has changed in recent months with the addition of 54 wind towers.

Announced last week, all 54 towers associated with the Laredo Ridge Wind Farm have been completed. The last tower was put up last week.  Laredo Ridge should be producing electricity by the end of December.

Laredo Ridge has transformed the area, its wind towers visible for miles around. They tower over the now barren corn fields.

But, will they be the only wind towers constructed in this part of the state? Not likely because work continues to move forward on the Prairie Breeze Wind Energy project to be located in southern Antelope County.

At the October meeting of the Nebraska Power Review Board, the board voted three to zero (with two absent) to conditionally approve Prairie Breeze Wind Energy Center as a Certified Renewable Export Facility under revised statute. The application was filed under the statutes revised under the recent LB 1048 (Wind Energy Export Bill). LB 1048 requires that 10 percent of the energy be made available to Nebraska public power entities. The provision, according to Invenergy, allows for participation by public power even if the majority of the project’s power is leaving the state.

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