ALLETE Clean Energy says its Glen Ullin Energy Center is now online and producing wind power for Xcel Energy customers in the Upper Midwest.
Glen Ullin Energy Center, a 106 MW wind facility, is located about 40 miles west of Bismarck, N.D. Comprising 43 2.3- and 2.5-MW GE turbines, the wind farm will employ about 10 people during operation and provide property tax and other business benefits to area communities and lease payments to landowners.
“I would like to thank the North Dakota policymakers and area landowners who supported this investment,” says ALLETE Clean Energy President Allan S. Rudeck Jr. “North Dakota’s ‘all-of-the-above’ energy policy strengthens local economies through projects like Glen Ullin and has made the state a national energy leader.”
“Wind energy in the Upper Midwest will help us deliver low-cost, carbon-free electricity to our customers and is part of our plan to reduce carbon emissions 80 percent by 2030,” adds Chris Clark, president of Xcel Energy-Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota. “As a wind energy leader for more than a decade, projects like Glen Ullin bring investments to North Dakota while also keeping bills low for our customers.”
Glen Ullin Energy Center is the third North Dakota wind expansion project developed and built by ALLETE Clean Energy and the first it will own and operate. It also developed the 107.5MW Thunder Spirit wind farm near Hettinger and sold it to Montana-Dakota Utilities in 2015. ALLETE Clean Energy expanded Thunder Spirit to about 155 MW and sold the expansion to MDU in 2018.
ALLETE Clean Energy is working on the 80 MW South Peak wind site in Montana, with plans to bring it online near the end of the year to sell power to NorthWestern Energy. Also. the company’s 300 MW Diamond Spring wind project in Oklahoma has broken ground and will sell wind power to Walmart, Starbucks and Smithfield Foods. It is ALLETE Clean Energy’s first project to sell wind power to corporate customers and will come online in late 2020 as the company’s largest wind site.
Photo courtesy of ALLETE
