DEAL – DAKOTA WIND TO SOUTHEAST

TVA to buy 450 megawatts from Dakota wind turbines
Duncan Mansfield, October 23, 2009 (AP)

"The Tennessee Valley Authority, looking outside the region to boost its renewable energy portfolio… will buy 450 megawatts of wind power capacity from the Great Plains.

"The nation's largest public utility has signed 20-year power purchase agreements with… CVP Renewable Energy Co. [for 200 megawatts from 87 wind turbines at its planned Ashley project in North Dakota] and…Invenergy Wind LLC [for 250 megawatts from 167 turbines at its proposed Hurricane Lake project in South Dakota]…The added wind power should reach TVA's seven-state system in 2012…It will be enough to supply 140,000 homes…"

The Midwest has enough wind to power the country but... (click to enlarge)

"TVA's call in December to buy up to 2,000 megawatts in renewable energy attracted more than 60 proposals…[T]hree more wind contracts could be announced by year's end…[The purchase price was said to be competitive with electricity market prices]…"

...Every region of the country has New energy resources. Or it can build new transmission to bring New Energy in. (click to enlarge)

"TVA was the first utility to develop a commercial wind farm in the Southeast when it erected three turbines on the reclaimed strip mine on Buffalo Mountain in 2000. But it has been slow to add capacity…[Its] total renewable capacity now is about 50 megawatts — mostly from the wind farm…demonstration-scale solar collectors…landfill gas recycling…[and] some 4,300 megawatts from its clean hydroelectric generation — out of a total TVA capacity of more than 32,000 megawatts. TVA gets most of its power from coal-fired and nuclear plants.

"…[T]he new renewable purchases should make TVA's [New Energy] portfolio one of the largest in the region…TVA officials say biomass and solar energy have the greatest potential in the utility's territory, which includes most of Tennessee and parts of Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia…[T]he valley also has more wind power available…"