Wind Towers Springing Up

The landscape along Highway 83 south of Minot has changed in the past 98 days. Dozens of wind tur...  More »

The landscape along Highway 83 south of Minot has changed in the past 98 days. Dozens of wind turbines have sprouted from the prairie. And by the end of the year, eighty, 262-foot towers will be producing enough electricity to power some 36,000 homes. Jim Olson reports on the latest wind farm project to spring up in North Dakota. Since 2002, the sound of 100-foot blades slicing through clear North Dakota air has echoed across the farmland south of Minot. And now, like proud parents, the two original Prairie Winds turbines are spinning while overseeing the birth of 80 more windmills - each a little larger than the original two. The two initial turbines are 200 feet tall and put out 1.3 megawatts of energy apiece. The new 262-foot offspring produce 1.5 megawatts each. (Daryl Hill, Basin Electric) "As designs have changed and technologies have evolved, a little bit bigger, a little bit more capacity we are getting out of these new ones." Daryl Hill of Basin Electric says the wind farm will crank out about 120 megawatts by the time it's online - which officials hope will be by the end of this year. But it takes a lot to make this all happen. (Daryl Hill, Basin Electric) "First you have to build the turbines and that involves pouring the foundation, setting the pedestal, setting the generator on top, attaching the blades. Then you have to build the collector lines to get the power to the collector substation. Then you have to build access roads. So there are a lot of things that have to happen." A Basin official estimated there are upwards of 300 people working on the project daily. From truck drivers to crane operators to workers to bolt the pieces of these mammoth structures together - there's a lot going on. As for the towers themselves, each one sits in about 1.2 million pounds of concrete and, all told, each tower and its support weighs in at about two million pounds. And looking at the landscape, there are a lot of two million pound footprints dotting the hills. (Daryl Hill, Basin Electric) "The price tag of this whole project is around $250 million so it's quite an investment in developing generating resources for cousumers in nine states." (Jim Olson) "With 60 of the 80 turbines in place, the landscape has changed a lot along Highway 83. And it's a lot of land, some 25,000 acres." (Daryl Hill, Basin Electric) "Even though each individual wind turbine doesn't consume very much physical space, the area we investigated for the project covers 25,000 acres." Hill says the wind farm will cast a long shadow over Basin's efforts to meet congressional mandates for clean energy. It will represent about 20% of the company's 600 megawatts of renewable energy production by the end of next year. And that's something the company is happy to hear. South of Minot, Jim Olson, KX News. Work has been going on around the clock for 98 days and a Basin official says it's all been done - about 140,000 man hours - without any time lost to injuries.  « Less