This summer, MidAmerican Energy Co. will kick off construction of two wind farms in Adair County, Iowa.
The Arbor Hill project includes 125 wind turbines, and the Orient project includes 150 turbines with an option to add up to 100 more. Both are part of the company’s previously announced Wind XI project.
The 275 Vestas turbines will add 550 MW of wind generation capacity for MidAmerican Energy customers – enough to power more than 230,000 average Iowa homes. Crews are scheduled to begin construction on both projects in June.
Arbor Hill and Orient will add to MidAmerican Energy’s three existing wind farms in Adair County: Adair, Morning Light and Rolling Hills.
“This is another step forward for our Wind XI project,” comments Mike Fehr, MidAmerican Energy’s vice president of resource development. “Every wind farm we add gets us closer to achieving our 100 percent renewable energy vision.”
The company anticipates that renewable generation will equate to more than 90% of its customers’ annual retail electricity usage by 2020.
The 550 MW associated with the two new Adair County wind farms will add an estimated average of $6.6 million in annual county property taxes, the company says. The projects will also pay an average $4.8 million each year in landowner payments and create both construction jobs and long-term operations and maintenance jobs in the county.
The $3.6 billion Wind XI project is scheduled for completion in December 2019. The project will include up to 1,000 wind turbines and add up to 2 GW of wind generation capacity in Iowa; that’s enough energy to power more than 840,000 average Iowa homes, says MidAmerican. Other Wind XI projects, the Beaver Creek II wind farm in Greene County and the North English wind farm in Poweshiek County, are both under construction. Two additional wind farms, Beaver Creek in Boone and Greene counties and Prairie in Mahaska County, are operating. MidAmerican Energy is working with developers, county officials and landowners on potential wind farm sites in several Iowa counties for the balance of Wind XI.
