Oklahoma City-based OG&E is seeking approval from the Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC) to build and operate a 198 MW wind farm. If approved, the company would achieve its goal of quadrupling the amount of wind power on its system by 2012. The Crossroads wind farm is expected to come online in the second half of 2011.
OG&E set a goal of quadrupling its wind power production in 2008 when it had 170 MW of wind energy on its system. Today, it has 270 MW of wind power capacity and plans to add an additional 280 MW from projects slated for completion later this year. With the addition of the Crossroads project, the company will have approximately 751 MW wind generation capacity.
OG&E expects that the wind farm will result in an average residential customer seeing an increase of $0.65 per month beginning in 2012. This increase should drop to $0.09 in 2013, the company says.
The $400 million wind farm, to be developed by RES Americas, will be located in Dewey County, Okla. It will have 86 Siemens turbines rated 2.3MW each and will connect with OG&E's new Windspeed transmission line.
Construction is expected to begin shortly after the project receives approval and will take about 12 months to complete.
SOURCE: OGE Energy Corp.
