Energy company Vitol has awarded a repowering project to White Construction, a subsidiary of Infrastructure and Energy Alternatives Inc. (IEA) that manages utility-scale renewable energy and heavy civil infrastructure projects.
The award is for the repowering of the 240 MW Big Sky Wind Farm in Bureau and Lee counties in Illinois. Work will begin in August and is expected to be completed in July 2022. IEA will perform all of the engineering, procurement and construction needs of the project, including full decommissioning and foundation removal of five wind turbine generators (WTG) and the repowering of 109 turbines, including the replacement of nacelles, hubs, blades and adaptor rings.
By the end of the construction, it is expected that the project will increase the wind farm’s annual output by approximately 60%.
“White Construction originally built the Big Sky Wind Farm in 2010, and we are very excited to partner with Vitol to repower this project,” says JP Roehm, IEA’s president and CEO. “As the wind energy industry matures and turbine technology improves, we anticipate repowering projects will become more common – it’s a great way to increase clean energy production without having to construct a new farm from scratch.”
To date, IEA has constructed more than 20 GW of renewable energy projects across North America.
