Platte River Power Authority’s announcement that it would buy 150 megawatts of electric capacity from a new wind farm will mean that the power wholesaler and its member cities such as Loveland will be getting 48 percent of their electricity from renewable sources.
The agency announced Tuesday that it had signed a power purchase agreement with Salt Lake City-based Enyo Renewable Energy.
The deal means all of the electricity generated by the wind farm to be built along the Colorado-Wyoming border will go to PRPA and the cities that own it: Loveland, Longmont, Fort Collins and Estes Park, according to Platte River spokesman Steve Roalstad.
He said the project should start selling electricity from the wind farm by the end of 2020. The contract runs through June 2042, Roalstad said.
The wind farm will be about 20 miles north of PRPA’s Rawhide Energy Station, which is north of Wellington, and a transmission line will be built to carry the power to the agency’s Rawhide substation, he said.
Enyo and its subsidiary, Roundhouse Renewable Energy, still need to receive approval from a variety of regulatory agencies before they can start building the facility, probably in 2019, according to Christine Mikell, a principal with Enyo Renewable Energy.
14,000 acres in Colorado and Wyoming
The wind farm will be built on ranchers’ land on both sides of the border west of Interstate 25, Mikell said. The 14,000-acre parcel will continue to be used for cattle grazing, she said.
The wind farm could have as many as 75 wind turbines, although she said the technology is changing so fast that she doesn’t know yet what size the turbines will be and how many will be needed to generate the amount of electricity required. Company officials also haven’t determined which company would build the turbines.
The addition of the wind-generated electricity to PRPA’s portfolio shouldn’t affect the price of the power the agency sells to the cities, Roalstad said.
“Prices are very comparable to existing energy resources,” he said. “The prices we received were very favorable, which is why the leadership decided to acquire more than we were originally looking for.”
Effect on Loveland, Longmont
The city of Loveland gets almost all of its electric power from Platte River, according to Gretchen Stanford, customer relations manager with Loveland Water and Power. The exception is the city’s new 3.5-megawatt solar field in northwest Loveland.
“What we’re being delivered is 32 percent noncarbon,” Stanford said. “With this purchase, it will be 48 percent.”
Longmont also gets almost all of its power from PRPA, said Longmont Power & Communications spokesman Scott Rochat. The city does have a small, 500-kilowatt hydroelectric plant on St. Vrain Creek west of Lyons, he said, which came on line in 1912 as Longmont’s first source of municipal power.
Earlier this month, the Longmont City Council adopted a resolution that set a city goal of receiving 50 percent of its electricity from “carbon-free” sources by 2022 and 100 percent by 2030.
“Certainly this wind farm is a strong step in that direction,” Rochat said.
The energy from renewable sources that Platte River Power Authority sells to the four cities comes from its own solar installation and from existing wind farms and other sources. In addition, the Rawhide power plant produces electricity by burning coal and natural gas.
Roalstad said customers who want to use more electricity from renewable sources can join PRPA’s Green Tariff program, which adds an extra charge.
He said he doesn’t know how much of the new wind power would be available to Green Tariff customers.
Wind speeds, plants, wildlife studied
Enyo Renewable Energy was formed in 2016 from the former Wasatch Wind company, Mikell said. The company developed the first wind farm built in Utah, she said. It has built two of the state’s three wind farms, she said, and one in Glenrock, Wyo.
Mikell said the company does extensive surveying of potential wind farm sites before contracting with landowners to lease the land.
Among the factors the company has studied are the wind speeds. An area must have winds of sufficient speed “all through the year and all through the day,” she said. Although she said the new site’s actual speeds are proprietary information, in general a wind turbine turns on when the wind hits about 11 mph and shuts off at 50 or 60 mph.
The company also looks for threatened or endangered species of plants and animals, she said. Because of wind turbines’ tendency to kill birds and bats, the company looked for the number of eagles’ nests in the area and other factors.
“We take it very seriously,” she said. “We’ve walked away from two projects because we found too many eagles’ nests.”
Craig Young: 970-635-3634, cyoung@reporter-herald.com, www.twitter.com/CraigYoungRH.