Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association has signed a 25-year power purchase agreement with a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources for a proposed 150MW Carousel wind farm in eastern Colorado, US.
Under the terms of the agreement, Tri-State will purchase all the electricity generated at the proposed wind power plant including associated environmental attributes.
Once operational, the Carousel wind farm will provide affordable electricity to Tri-State’s 44 member cooperatives throughout Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming.
The subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources will be responsible for construction, owning and operating the Carousel wind farm.
Earlier, the Colorado legislature had approved a new mandate doubling the renewable standard for the state’s rural electric cooperatives.
The Carousel wind farm project is said to help Tri-State meet that mandate, as well as a renewable energy standard in New Mexico.
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By GlobalDataAccording to Tri-State, the wind farm project will be interconnected to the company’s existing power transmission facilities in the Burlington area.
The upgrades of the transmission facilities have been in the planning process since 2010 and would be completed in 2016.
Tri-State senior vice president Brad Nebergall said the key factor in this agreement with NextEra was having the project completed at the same time as those transmission system upgrades.
"We can’t reliably purchase and deliver the output from Carousel to our member systems without the appropriate transmission infrastructure," Nebergall added.
