New tack: Utility looks to boost wind generation ($2 billion, Oklahoma)

[jpak]

http://newsok.com/article/3164229/1194222148

HAVING been rebuffed in its effort to expand one of its coal-fired power plants, Oklahoma Gas & Electric Co. is proposing a greener, and thus perhaps more palatable, alternative for producing electricity — the Oklahoma wind.

OG&E Chairman Pete Delaney last week announced that the company will ask the Corporation Commission to approve plans to build wind farms in northwestern Oklahoma, along with the transmission lines to transport the electricity where it's needed. The $2 billion project would result in four times as much energy as is now generated by OG&E turbines near Woodward and Fort Supply.

Those facilities have about 170 megawatts of capacity — enough to power 50,000 homes, and roughly 3 percent of the company's total generating capacity. Adding 600 megawatts would provide enough electricity to light another 175,000 homes, or thereabouts. OG&E hopes to be producing about 10 percent of its electricity from wind power by 2012.

When commissioners rejected OG&E's bid to upgrade its Red Rock coal-fired plant, at least one member of the three-man board lamented the utility's seeming attachment to traditional energy sources. "More alternatives should have been considered,” Jim Roth said. "Wind power was seemingly ignored.”

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