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Wind power in Indiana

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Wind power in Indiana

Wind power in Indiana was limited to a few small water-pumping windmills on farms until 2008 with construction of Indiana's first utility-scale wind power facility, Goodland (phase I) with a nameplate capacity of 130 MW. As of January 2016, Indiana had a total of 1895 MW of wind power capacity installed, ranking it 12th among U.S. states.

Contents

The main utility-scale development up to 2016 has been in the northwest part of the state in Benton, White, and Jasper Counties. Fowler Ridge phase III should be completed later in 2010, to give a final nameplate capacity of 750 MW, making Fowler Ridge the Midwest's largest wind farm, and one of the largest in the world. Phases II-VI at Meadow Lake, when complete, will make Meadow Lake even larger at 1000 MW.

Wind generation

Indiana wind generation by month.

Source:

Wind farms

The following table of wind farms and utility-scale wind power developments uses data from the AWEA, the State of Indiana, and other sources. For the larger projects constructed in phases, the table lists separate information for each phase. The name of each wind farm is the name used by the energy company when referring to the farm. The Wind Farm suffix is implied and hence removed for brevity. For more details and references for each wind farm, see its article.

Single-unit turbines

In addition to the above wind farms, single stand-alone units have also been built in multiple other locations, mostly at schools. Some of these units were placed to test the environment for future wind energy development.

Environmental impact

According to the USDOE, each 1000 MW of wind power capacity installed in Indiana will annually save 1,684 million gallons of water and eliminate 3.1 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

For comparison, Indiana emitted a total of 230,830,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2007.

As of March 2010 Indiana lacked a renewable energy standard, unlike several other midwestern states: Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri and Iowa. Nevertheless, Indiana's wind power development had outpaced that of Ohio and Michigan.

References

Wind power in Indiana Wikipedia


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