Mendota Hills Wind Farm

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Three of the turbines at Mendota Hills Wind Farm. Lee County Il Mendota Hills3.jpg
Three of the turbines at Mendota Hills Wind Farm.

The Mendota Hills Wind Farm is a wind farm in the U.S. state of Illinois near the village of Paw Paw in Lee County. It consists of 63 operating wind turbines. Each wind turbine stands 214 ft (65.23 m) tall and has three 85 ft (35.91 m) long blades. The wind farm was constructed from June 2003 to November 24, 2003. Mendota Hills was the first utility-scale wind farm in the state of Illinois. [1]

Wind farm group of wind turbines

A wind farm or wind park is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. A large wind farm may consist of several hundred individual wind turbines and cover an extended area of hundreds of square miles, but the land between the turbines may be used for agricultural or other purposes. A wind farm can also be located offshore.

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Illinois State of the United States of America

Illinois is a state in the Midwestern and Great Lakes region of the United States. It has the fifth largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth largest population, and the 25th largest land area of all U.S. states. Illinois is often noted as a microcosm of the entire United States. With Chicago in northeastern Illinois, small industrial cities and immense agricultural productivity in the north and center of the state, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a diverse economic base, and is a major transportation hub. Chicagoland, Chicago's metropolitan area, encompasses over 65% of the state's population. The Port of Chicago connects the state to international ports via two main routes: from the Great Lakes, via the Saint Lawrence Seaway, to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, via the Illinois Waterway to the Illinois River. The Mississippi River, the Ohio River, and the Wabash River form parts of the boundaries of Illinois. For decades, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport has been ranked as one of the world's busiest airports. Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and, through the 1980s, in politics.

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Description

The Mendota Hills Wind Farm in southeast Lee county just west of Interstate 39 exit 82 Illinois wind farm near I-39 exit 82.jpg
The Mendota Hills Wind Farm in southeast Lee county just west of Interstate 39 exit 82

The Mendota Hills Wind Farm consists of 63 Gamesa G52-800 kW wind turbines, each costing around US$1 million. Each turbine stands 214 feet (65 m) tall and has a diameter of 171 feet (52 m) across the rotor, the two ton rotors spin at 25  rpm. [1] Each of the three blades measure 83 ft (25.91 m) long. [1] The turbine towers are spread out over 2,200 acres (890 ha) of Lee County, Illinois, near the village of Paw Paw and adjacent to Interstate 39. The wind farm was developed by Navitas Energy, and is now owned and operated by Leeward . [2] Energy produced at Mendota Hills is sold to Commonwealth Edison. [3] Each tower has a 2.5 megawatt capacity giving a total capacity at Mendota Hills Wind Farm of 72.6 megawatts. [1] The site produces enough power (approximately 110 million kilowatt hours annually) to power about 13,000 homes. [3] 29 SG126-2.5's were put up on their place in 2019 [4]

United States dollar Currency of the United States of America

The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and its territories per the United States Constitution since 1792. In practice, the dollar is divided into 100 smaller cent (¢) units, but is occasionally divided into 1000 mills (₥) for accounting. The circulating paper money consists of Federal Reserve Notes that are denominated in United States dollars.

Revolutions per minute is the number of turns in one minute. It is a unit of rotational speed or the frequency of rotation around a fixed axis.

Interstate 39 (I-39) is a highway in the Midwestern United States. I-39 runs from Normal, Illinois at I-55 to Wisconsin Highway 29 (WIS 29) in Rib Mountain, Wisconsin, approximately six miles (9.7 km) southwest of Wausau. I-39 was designed to replace U.S. Route 51 (US 51), which in the early 1980s was one of the busiest two-lane highways in the United States. I-39 was built in the 1980s and 1990s.

History

The Mendota Hills Wind Farm looking northwest near I-39 Lee County Il Mendota Hills4.jpg
The Mendota Hills Wind Farm looking northwest near I-39

The Mendota Hills Wind Farm's beginnings are rooted in the spring of 2002 when land owners were first approached about the wind towers. For the two years previous to that wind metering had been taking place in the area where the wind farm is located today. Construction could only begin, in June 2003, after a series of environmental and archaeological tests and approval from the Lee County Zoning Board. [1] Construction on the wind farm was complete by November 2003 and the Mendota Hills Wind Farm officially went online on November 24, 2003. [3] Landowners and farmers are compensated by the developer, Navitas Energy of Minneapolis, Minnesota, on a contractual basis. Most landowners are paid US$1,200 to $1,500 per megawatt of electricity produced on each tower. [1]

Wind resource assessment is the process by which wind power developers estimate the future energy production of a wind farm. Accurate wind resource assessments are crucial to the successful development of wind farms.

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Clark, Carol, "Local residents take a whirlwind tour Archived 2007-10-08 at the Wayback Machine ," Galesburg Register Mail, via Western Illinois Economic Development Commission. Retrieved 1 July 2007.
  2. ↑ "U.S. Portfolios". Infigen Energy. Archived from the original on 4 February 2014. Retrieved 29 October 2013.
  3. 1 2 3 "Mendota Hills Wind Farm". Navitas Energy. Archived from the original on 8 February 2005. Retrieved 29 October 2013.
  4. ↑ https://www.windpowerengineering.com/business-news-projects/leeward-partners-with-siemens-gamesa-to-repower-illinois-mendota-hills-wind-farm/

Coordinates: 41°43′32″N89°02′44″W / 41.7256°N 89.0456°W / 41.7256; -89.0456

Geographic coordinate system Coordinate system

A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position; alternatively, a geographic position may be expressed in a combined three-dimensional Cartesian vector. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection.

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