U.S. company MidAmerican Energy Company has announced a massive expansion of wind power projects in the state of Iowa.
MidAmerican Energy and Siemens Energy, Inc. have entered into a supply agreement for 258 2.3-megawatt wind turbines. This represents a total of nearly 600 megawatts and enough to meet the electricity needs of 190,000 households. The turbines will be installed in four Iowa counties next year.
MidAmerican Energy has also announced an asset purchase agreement with RPM Access to acquire their Laurel Wind Project, where some of the Siemens turbines are planned to be located.
Aside from the environmental positives, Bill Fehrman, president of MidAmerican Energy, said there will be many other benefits from the projects; including the capital investment by the company, construction jobs, ongoing maintenance jobs, annual payments to landowners and revenue from property taxes.
MidAmerican Energy entered the wind energy sector in 2004 and now boasts a total of just over 1.2 gigawatts of wind power capacity. The addition of the 593.4-megawatt expansion will see approximately 26 percent of MidAmerican Energy’s total generation capacity coming from wind power sources. The company says it has been able to make major wind power investments without raising its customers’ base electric rates.
CalEnergy Generation, a subsidiary, operates 10 geothermal generating plants in Southern California’s Imperial Valley, which produce electricity solely from naturally occurring steam.
MidAmerican and its subsidiaries, MidAmerican Energy Company, PacifiCorp, CE Electric UK, CalEnergy Generation, Kern River Gas Transmission Company and Northern Natural Gas, serve approximately 6.9 million electricity and gas customers in the USA and UK.
