Largest Wind Farm in Kansas (250 MW) Built by Italian Energy Firm

Science & Technology (alternative energy)

wind turbine blades motion blur photo
photo: Brent Danley

It may not be a world record beater, but a new wind farm in the Great Plains does take the blue ribbon on two fronts: The largest by Italian renewable energy developer Enel and the largest so far in Kansas. Enel’s press release is fairly terse on the development of the Smoky Hills wind farm, but this is what it’s all about:

Operational by End of 2008
Located about 19 miles west of Salina, Kansas, the 250 MW project consists of a mixture of 1.8 MW Vestas and 1.5 MW GE turbines. When fully operational at the end of this year, Enel says that it will produce enough electricity to supply 85,000 homes and avoid the release of 750,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.

Enel says that five utilities will purchase the electricity generated at Smoky Hills: Sunflower Electric Power Corporation, Midwest Energy Inc. and Kansas City Board of Public Utilities, the City of Independence, Missouri, and the City of Springfield, Missouri.

For Those Not Up on Enel
Enel distributes and sells power and gas to more than 52 million customers in 22 countries in Europe, North America and Latin America. It has about 30,000 MW of renewable energy power generation capacity using hydro, geothermal, wind, solar and biomass.

(A bit) More at :: Enel SpA (press release)

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