Tierra Energy to build Wyoming wind farm

[jpak]

http://austin.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2006/11/27/daily22.html

Tierra Energy LLC announced today that it has secured a contract to build a $55 million wind farm that will supply a Wyoming power company with renewable energy.

Austin-based Tierra Energy's subsidiary, Happy Jack Windpower, will provide Cheyenne Light Fuel & Power with wind-generated energy over a 20-year period. Cheyenne Light Fuel & Power is a subsidiary of Rapid City, S.D.-based Black Hills Corp. (NYSE:BKH).

When the Happy Jack project becomes operational in 2008, it will generate about 100 million kilowatt-hours of wind energy a year for the city of Cheyenne and surrounding communities.

"Wind power is a rapidly growing and reliable power resource throughout the nation," says David Marks, president of Tierra Energy. "The ample wind resource available near Cheyenne makes it an ideal location for the operation of a wind-powered renewable energy project."

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[phantom power]

1. This seems like as good a time as any to pose a question...

How is the energy from these wind farms currently being used/managed? For instance, on a nice windy day, when these farms are producing a few hundred megawatts, do they shut down a gas-fired plant? How does the power contribute to the grid? To my knowledge, there is currently no large-scale storage capacity associated with these wind-farms, so any power they produce must either be used, or effectively dumped.