TVA expands wind turbines

By DUNCAN MANSFIELD Associated Press Writer January 14, 2003

KNOXVILLE, Tenn.- The Tennessee Valley Authority, founded in the 1930s to generate power from hydroelectric dams, has signed a $60 million deal to expand its wind power generating facility, the public utility said Tuesday.

The country's largest public utility has been operating three wind turbines on Buffalo Mountain, a reclaimed strip mine about 25 miles west of Knoxville, since 2001.

TVA will add 18 turbines to give the site a capacity of more than 28 megawatts, up from 1.8 megawatts. TVA officials estimate the wind farm will produce enough electricity to support 4,500 Tennessee Valley homes.

"This project represents the largest wind power program in the Southeast," TVA Vice President Jack Bailey said. "This is a true commitment by TVA in the region to ... clean and renewable energy."

Invenergy, a Chicago-based energy development company, will build, own and operate the new turbines, which are expected to be in operation in November in order to take advantage of a federal production tax credit.

Under the agreement, TVA puts no capital into the project unlike the three turbines it bought to start the site but TVA will buy $3 million of power from the Invenergy units annually for 20 years.

The new turbines, built by General Electric, will produce twice as much electricity as the three older units. They also will be about 90 feet taller at 388 feet.

"I know how dramatic three turbines are. I can't wait to see that whole array of turbines. It will be spectacular. It will be breathtaking," said Skila Harris, one of three TVA board members.

The TVA project pales compared to large wind farms in the Pacific Northwest, California and Texas, but this remains "a significant commitment to wind in our region," said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy watchdog group.

"TVA has been a leader in the region with wind power. With this expansion, TVA continues to demonstrate that wind technologies are both feasible and desirable for the Southeast," Smith said.

Nationally, wind power is the fastest growing electric power source _ outpacing gas turbines, coal plants or nuclear plants, he said. The Energy Department lists 4,558 megawatts of U.S. wind power.

However, there aren't that many suitable sites in the Tennessee Valley for wind turbines, Bailey said.

TVA looked hard at building a second wind farm on Stone Mountain near Mountain City in northeast Tennessee, close by the Virginia and North Carolina borders.

But some residents and North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper opposed the project. Cooper contended the turbines would destroy the "beauty and peacefulness" of the mountains and violate his state's Mountain Ridge Protection Act.

TVA met similar resistance from Chattanooga area residents when the agency considered a site on Lookout Mountain before settling on Buffalo Mountain.

Wind is a key component in TVA's Green Power Switch alternative energy program, which also uses electricity generated by solar collectors and reclaimed landfill gas.

More than 6,000 residential customers and more than 300 businesses pay a few dollars more each month for a block of TVA green power. Forty-nine of TVA's 158 distributors participate in the program.

"I think we have the right goal in mind, which is ultimately to get the green power program to the point where enough people can choose it to make it a stand-alone program, and it won't be subsidized," said Bill Baxter, another TVA director.

TVA officials say that could take 20 years.

TVA provides electricity for some 8.3 million people in Tennessee and parts of Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.