Wyoming

Wyoming is blowing away the competition on wind-power generation and research.

The new Wind Energy Research Center at the University of Wyoming studies this renewable resource and ways to improve technologies to tap into it. Power Company of Wyoming, an affiliate of Denver-based Anschutz Corp., wants to build 1,000 wind turbines near Rawlins and a power line that could export the electricity to the Southwest. A $4 billion wind farm has been proposed in Converse County in eastern Wyoming.

Wind is big, but it isn’t the only new energy play. The Western Research Institute, a nonprofit based on the University of Wyoming campus in Laramie, studies biomass and coal gasification, piloting a generator run by synthesis gas produced from straw.

Institute researchers work with government and private industry to get innovative energy sources to the marketplace.

The state’s use of renewable energy and hydroelectric power far outpaces national figures, but the growth in the wind business is hard to miss. Wyoming ranked fourth in wind generation growth between 2007 and 2008, according to a July 2009 U.S. Department of Energy Report.

PacifiCorp, which operates as Rocky Mountain Power in Wyoming, already has six wind projects in the state, and two more, McFadden Ridge I and High Plains, both in Albany County, will be on line by the end of 2009.

The company is in the permitting process for Dunlap I, a 74-turbine project in Carbon County, just north of Medicine Bow, says spokesman Jeff Hymas. It should be operational by the end of 2010.

Rocky Mountain Power has been harnessing Wyoming’s wind for more than a decade; Duke Energy joined the party in 2008 with the Happy Jack Windpower Project in Cheyenne. Two more Duke wind projects will be running by the end of 2009: the Campbell Hill Windpower Project near Casper and the Silver Sage Windpower Project near Cheyenne.

The 66 turbines at Campbell Hill alone will be capable of producing power for 25,000 to 30,000 average homes each year.

The University of Wyoming in 2009 took the first steps toward a separate building for a new center that will house a large, closed-loop wind tunnel.

“We do everything with wind resources, from how to capture it to how it gets converted from wind to electric,” says Jonathan Naughton, center director and an associate professor of mechanical engineering.

He compares current wind technology to airplane technology prior to widespread introduction of the jet. Wind turbines may be in their third generation, but the technology is not yet mature.

Opportunities abound in the field, from materials to aerodynamics to elastics to extracting more energy to protecting turbines from damage, Naughton says.

A big push involves building better models of low-atmosphere winds that turbines reach. Wind speed is rated on scale from one to seven.

“We have some really high-end Class 7 winds, but they are up in the mountains and remote,” says Ed Werner, director of the Wyoming Wind Working Group. “But we have lots of Class 5 and Class 6 winds, where there is not just a lot of good power but a consistency we did not expect. There are some really interesting discoveries on the reliability of those winds.”