Hey, remember how the GOP in Texas claimed that wind turbines don’t work in winter and tried to blame the collapse of their power grid on them?
Yeah, not so much.
The Des Moines Register is reporting this morning that last year, Iowa (which, some of you may know, is often quite a bit colder than Texas, and subject to blizzards, ice storms, brutal subzero cold snaps, and other similar winter weather one finds in the upper Midwest in the winter and early spring) garnered nearly 60% of it’s energy from wind turbines and substantially increased the number of those turbines functioning in the state. The state now approaches 5,900 working wind turbines supplying power for the state, having brought an impressive 540 new turbines online last year.
This is no small feat. In 2019, the state’s wind power generations supplied 44% of it’s needs, so the increase in 2020 represents a significant increase.
And the story in some parts of the state is even more impressive. MidAmerican Energy, the state’s largest energy provider, reports that wind power currently accounts for more than 80% of it’s energy — again, a substantial increase over 2019 when it accounted for 61% of the utility’s output.
Wind power is far and away the biggest source of renewable energy in the state, though there are other sources. There are three hydroelectric plants in Southeast Iowa, the largest of which at Keokuk is more than a century old and accounts for about 142 Mw of production. We also get a small amount of energy from biomass, and solar power is largely by individual home and business installations, though there are projects underway for some solar farms — one near the IA-MN border that anticipates providing 750 Mw, and a 100 Mw facility in Wapello near the SE border.
Iowa used to have a single operating nuclear facility in Linn County, but it was decommissioned last year. In an interesting twist, the site will be turned into part of a solar farm that hopes to come online by the end of 2023. In another interesting twist, the solar farm will provide more energy than the nuclear plant did — the solar facility is proposed to provide 690 Mw, while the former nuclear plant provided 615 Mw.
In other Iowa energy news, the coal-fired plant in Lansing, Iowa, is in the process of being decommissioned (process complete by the end of next year) and another coal plant in Burlington is being converted to natural gas. Alliant Energy, owner of the Lansing and Burlington plants, has also announced plans to develop 400 Mw of solar energy. Alliant has committed to a goal of zero coal energy production by 2040. At this point, the utility owns only 1 remaining coal plant in Iowa, and co-owns 1 other with MidAmerican Energy.
There are two more small coal plants in Linn County that are targeted to be decommissioned by 2025.
The DMR does note there is growing resistance in some areas to wind farms, with claims of negative health and aesthetic impacts. Some jurisdictions have increased required setbacks or put other restrictions on siting and building wind farms in the state. Personally, I don’t see this being sufficient, at least in the short term, to put much a damper on the building boom. And plenty of farmers in rural areas are discovering that allowing turbines to be sited on their properties is an attractive additional cash flow — to the tune of around $30 million in lease money — with little to no effort on their part.
In a sidebar — since 2008, Iowa has produced more energy than it uses, and roughly 1/3 of our energy production is actually exported to neighboring states. And that’s why (I’m looking at YOU, Texas) being part of a larger grid is so important — you can generate the power and move it around to where it’s needed, when it’s needed. And that’s why we need to move on upgrading our grid to make that shuffling of energy around easier and more efficient.
Anyway, I thought this was exciting news and wanted to pass it along. Maybe someone can email the story to Governor Abbot down in Texas.
Edit: Just wanted to add a little context, here, to some numbers. One megawatt is enough power for (by current average power usage) about 600-800 US homes, give or take (a lot of variability there based on where in the country and relative energy efficiency, of course, so that’s a ballpark number with big error bars).
Iowa’s total wind power capacity increased to 11,600 megawatts in 2020.
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