Buckeye Wind Project, Ohio, United States of America

The Buckeye Wind Project will be the first commercial utility-scale project in Ohio. Located in the Champaign County of central Ohio, the wind farm is being developed by EverPower Renewables Corporation (Ever Power) and will cost $380m, providing electricity to 42,000 homes. The project will offset greenhouse-gas emissions by 350,000t annually, while reducing the state's dependency on fossil fuels.

The project received approval from the Ohio Power Siting Board (OPSB) on 24 March 2010. The construction was meant to begin in mid-2010 but has been delayed due to opposition from various affected authorities as well as a local citizens group. Two appeals were filed in September 2010; the first was filed by a local citizens group commonly known as Union Citizens United and the other one was filed by Champaign County, Goshen Township, Salem Township and Union Township. The appeals were heard by the Ohio's highest court in the second half of 2011. The final judgement is being awaited.

In addition to the Buckeye Project, the OPSB approved the construction of two large wind power projects, Hardin Wind Energy Farm and Wood County Wind Farm.

Currently being developed by Chicago-based Invenergy, the Hardin farm will include 200 wind turbines.It will have a generating capacity of 300MW. The construction will be carried out in two phases and the plant is expected to be online in December 2012.

The Wood County farm, being developed by JW Great Lakes Wind, will be a 48MW project with 27 turbines.

Ohio has been supporting the development of wind power through the Ohio Wind Production & Manufacturing Incentive Program and has granted $5m to wind energy production projects, including the Buckeye Wind Project and the Wood County Wind Farm.

Buckeye wind project finance

EverPower has been awarded a $3m grant for the Buckeye wind project under Ohio's Wind Production & Manufacturing Incentive Program. The programme was set up to support the development of wind power projects.

Under this programme, the project will receive 1¢/KWh and an additional 0.2¢/KWh if the plant is installed with Ohio-made wind turbines. The incentive programme is a part of Ohio's alternative energy portfolio standard.

The project has also received financial backing from Terra Firm, a private equity arm of British company Guy Hands, which acquired EverPower Holdings for $350m in 2008.

Buckeye wind farm construction

EverPower hopes to begin construction on the project once the lawsuit is resolved, which is currently pending with the Ohio Supreme Court. The project also requires a few more environmental permits. Once these hurdles are cleared, construction is expected to start in the first quarter of 2012 and the plant is expected to be commercially operational in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Wind farm details

The wind farm will be spread over 10,000 acres of leased land and will be installed with 54 wind turbines. Each turbine, measuring 500ft in height, will generate 2.5MW of electricity, sufficient to power 600 to 750 homes. The type of turbines is not yet selected, but the project has been designed to suit either the Repower MM925 turbine or Nordex N100 or N90 turbine types.

The wind farm will have an installed capacity of 175MW and generate 135MW annually.

The proposed project was initially designed with 70 turbines. The approval, however, was granted for just 54 turbines by the Ohio Power Siting Board (OPSB). The other 16 turbines were disapproved citing aviation hazards, as they were proposed to be constructed near Champaign's airport.

Wind farm grid network

The wind farm will be connected to the transmission system of PJM Interconnection, a regional transmission organisation, through the Dayton Power & Light network (DPL). It will be connected to Urbana, Mechanicsburg and Darby via a 138KV PJM transmission line.

PJM Interconnection coordinates the transmission of electricity from the power plants to several states in the US.

Power market in Ohio

In 2008, Ohio's installed electricity capacity stood at 38,000MW, 86% of which was generated from coal-fired plants and 14% from nuclear and renewable sources. The state is one of the largest producers of electricity and also the fourth largest consumer of coal in the US.

As most of its electricity is generated from coal-fired plants, Ohio is also the highest greenhouse-gases emitting state in the nation. In order to reduce the greenhouse effect, the state implemented a new alternative energy portfolio standard in May 2008. The standard requires 25% of the electricity sold in the state to be generated from alternative energy sources by 2025 and at least half of it to be generated through wind power.

As on 11 February 2010, the state has the potential to install 55GW of onshore wind power that will generate 152TWh a year. As of May 2010, however, Ohio has used only 1.8% of its total wind power potential and ranks 27th in the US, with 7.2MW of wind energy production.