Four members of the AETF and one guest drove Feb. 11, 2010 to Nashville, KS in Barber County (near Medicine Lodge) to tour the Flat Ridge Wind Farm.  The 5,000 acre development of forty turbines is owned and operated by BP and Westar.

We arrived at the Flat Ridge Wind Farm operations facility at about 10:00 a.m. and were greeted by Mr. Rick Swindle, the OMS Site Supervisor  and Mr. Warren Messick, Deputy Facility Manager .  Mr. Messick gave us a tour of the operations headquarters and introduced us to some of the technical staff.  We received an overview of the operations center by him, Charles D. Amburgey, a Wind Operations Specialist from BP out of Houston, TX and other technical operations personnel.

We then drove with Mr. Messick to a turbine located in a pasture with cattle in the area.  There are no fences around the turbines, so the cattle can graze close to them and even stand in their shade to keep cool in the hot days of summer.  Most notable was the ability to carry on a conversation at the base of the turbine without having to speak loudly.  There wasn’t any sound from the blades rotating, and just a small whir from the fans used to draw air into the base of the tower to cool the generators at the top.  Young blades of native grasses were sprouting where construction had once disturbed the pasture and cattle gates had been installed, ensuring technicians the ability to access the turbines without letting the cows out.

We then drove to a wheat field to view another turbine that had been shut down to receive maintenance.   We were able to go inside the tower, see the ladders the workers climb to access the top to handle maintenance issues, and to view the thickness of the walls of the tower.  An irrigation circle stood idle in the winter, awaiting warmer weather.  Wheat had been planted within five feet of the transformer pad at the base of the tower.  Again, we were struck by how little impact there was on the agricultural use of the land.

Here are some ‘did you know’ facts about this wind farm that came from their brochure:

-          Winds as low as 12 miles per hour are enough to turn the massive blades and produce electricity

-          Each wind tower stands 262 feet to the bottom of the nacelle – that’s 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty!

-          Each blade is 155 feet long and weighs a whopping 26,000 pounds!

-          At full production the blades spin at 16 rotations per minute

-          Each wind turbine weighs about 400 tons and can product 2.5 MEGA watts each hour!

-          One complete rotation of the rotor is equal to 72 rotations of the generator

-          On the ground, each blade set encompasses 1.92 acres

-          The foundation for each wind tower required 365 cubic yards of concrete and is nearly 13 foot thick

-          First ground on the Flat Ridge Wind Farm was broken in June of 2008, and commercial operation began by March 2009

-          A high tech fiber optic network allows the wind turbines to be controlled remotely and communicate in real time!

The electricity produced at the turbines is generated as DC (direct current) and is changed to AC (alternating current) at each tower before it is sent to the substation located at the operations headquarters area.  Four string circuits, buried four foot underground, transport the electricity to the substation.  Bollards mark the location of the lines.  At the substation, a four mile above ground line was built to intersect an existing line, allowing the electricity to be fed into the local grid near Medicine Lodge, KS.

The group then traveled on to Medicine Lodge, KS to meet with the Barber County Commissioners.    We were warmly received and encouraged to ask any questions about their involvement with the Flat Ridge Wind Farm in Barber County.

Since Kansas statutes exempt renewable energy equipment from property taxes, a PILOT (Payments In Lieu Of Taxes) was negotiated for the life of the project.  The Commissioners shared the agreement that had been reached to assist our group in identifying elements and considerations for other counties considering wind development.

The Commissioners stated that the biggest challenge was with the maintenance and restoration of the roads and bridges that were used during construction.  Roads are designed for the number of “passes” anticipated by vehicles over a specific time frame and engineered accordingly.  Over 28,000 loads of equipment and workers traversed the roads during the construction phase, causing failure of the pavements at a quick pace during the construction phase.  The commissioners gave a copy of an extensive Road and Bridge agreement to the AETF.

Dr. Steve Garten, the Chairman of the Barber County Commissioners, stated that they would be happy to meet with any County Commissioners to discuss in more detail the concerns they had and how they addressed them, so similar errors/omissions would not have to occur in other locations.

We thanked them for their time and returned home after lunch.