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TVIG’s wind power generation services include balance of plant contracting, turbine siting, permitting, land contract negotiations, project design and construction and interconnection agreements.
Ector said the company began specializing in wind energy by chance in 2002—just when the industry was beginning to take off in the U.S. “We were doing some small projects in the Caribbean,” he said. “We built a diesel-powered facility but the diesel was so expensive we decided to try wind. The rest is history.”
Five years later – in 2007 -- the U.S. wind energy industry installed 5,244 megawatts (MW), expanding the nation’s total wind power generating capacity by 45% in a single calendar year and pumping over $9 billion into the economy, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA).
The AWEA reports that the new wind projects account for about 30% of the entire new power-producing capacity added nationally in 2007 and will power the equivalent of 1.5 million American households annually.
The U.S. wind power fleet now numbers 16,818 MW and spans 34 states, according to AWEA. American wind farms will generate an estimated 48 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of wind energy in 2008, just over 1% of U.S. electricity supply, powering the equivalent of over 4.5 million homes.
“Wind is an energy resource that’s clean, inexhaustible, and readily available,” Ector said. “It’s cost-effective too. A wind turbine costs up to $4.5 million to purchase and construct but once you’ve installed it, the fuel is free. Hydro-power is renewable and you can turn it on and off as opposed to when Mother Nature gives it to you but the Chickamauga Dam cost $40 million to build in 1940. Imagine trying to build it today.”
Wind power also reduces global warming emissions and conserves water resources, something increasingly valuable in arid areas and in times of drought.
Construction on Steel Winds began in September 2006, six months after the Environmental Protection Agency declared the site clean enough to be removed from the Superfund list, allowing the state Department of Environmental Conservation to oversee its development. The wind farm was completed in March 2007.
“It was a fairly small project for us,” said John Giardino, TVIG vice president of project management. “We’re currently constructing a wind farm with 172 turbines in Big Spring, T X, and we’ve worked on other wind farms in New York, Nebraska, South Dakota, Idaho and Tennessee.
“But the Steel Winds project had lots of firsts,” Giardino said. “It was one of the first wind farms in the nation located on a brownfield site. Parts of the farm were on EPA sites so we had to develop special remediation techniques new to TVIG or to the industry to comply with the EPA regulations. And it’s the first wind farm located in a city – Lackawanna, NY, right outside of Buffalo.
“Aerisyn is pleased to have been part of this award-winning project,” said Aerisyn CEO Mike Hohl. “As the first wind farm in a city, Steel Winds will be more costeffective to consumers in the transmission of electricity. Also, it is especially gratifying to see one of the most contaminated sites in the country transformed into a generator of renewable, clean energy.”
The Steel Winds site was part of Lake Erie until it was used by Bethlehem Steel as a slag dumping site for decades. Headquartered in Pennsylvania, Bethlehem Steel was, in its heyday, the second largest steel producer in the country.
Production stopped in Lackawanna in 1983 as the U.S. steel industry declined. In 2001 Bethlehem Steel declared bankruptcy.
The New York Times article noted the contrast on the Lake Erie shoreline since Steel Winds was completed last year.
“. . . above a labyrinth of pipes, blackened buildings and crumbling coke ovens that was once home to a behemoth Bethlehem Steel plant (stand) eight gleaming white windmills with 153-foot blades slowly turning in the wind off Lake Erie, on a former Superfund site where iron and steel slag and other industrial waste were dumped during 80 years of production,” The Times said.
“The windmills are a welcome change for an area buffeted by the loss of jobs and environmental problems since Bethlehem’s steep decline began in the mid-1970s as cheaper imported steel, mainly from Japan, began flooding the United States,” according to The Times.
Steel Winds has permits to build two more turbines and plans to put up as many as 27 in all. While Steel Winds will ultimately employ a few dozen people -- compared with the tens of thousands who worked at Bethlehem – area residents told The Times that the wind farm is having an uplifting impact on the community – through the clean energy reuse of the contaminated land.
And two Chattanooga companies played major roles in the landmark reclamation.
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