Cayuga Ridge wind farm

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has begun transmission of 300 MW of generated power from Iberdrola's Cayuga wind farm in Livingston County, Illinois. The two companies signed a PPA back in January 2010. This is the first of seven deliveries to take place under contracts which TVA signed for the purchase of a total of 1380 MW of clean electricity from various operators in the Midwest.

The PPA with Iberdrola Renewables is one of the largest such agreements TVA has made with a power supplier, and is estimated to be sufficient to supply about 325,000 average households with clean electricity. The next transmission will add 115 MW of power from Horizon Wind Energy's Pioneer Prarie wind farm, located in Howard and Mitchell counties in Iowa.

One of the main reasons TVA is sourcing its clean electricity supply from the Midwest and the Great Plains is the fact that winds in the Southeast tend to be with lower wind speeds, making wind farm projects less reliable and feasible.

[source: TVA, image: Iberdrola]