Press Releases
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July 16, 2001
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jennifer Walz, Communications Director, (218) 299-5407
HANG ON TO YOUR HARDHATS... GROUNDBREAKING FOR TURBINE II IS SET FOR
MONDAY
As ground is broken for the construction of Moorhead Public Service's
second wind turbine on Monday, July 16, 2001, at 10 a.m., over 400 new
Capture The Wind® members will be one step closer to purchasing
wind-generated electricity. A road connecting the first wind turbine,
Zephyr, and the site of the second turbine is currently under construction.
As the first phase of construction begins next week, a concrete foundation
on which the new 750-kilowatt wind turbine generator will be located will be
poured.
"With this turbine, Moorhead Public Service is now ranked first in the
country for its customer participation rates
according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratories (NREL)," says
Bill Schwandt, general manager of Moorhead Public Service. "That is
something our Capture The Wind®
members and the whole community of Moorhead can be very proud of."
While MPS’s Capture The Wind®
program has the support of approximately 7.4 percent of its customers, Los
Angeles’ Green Power for L.A. program is ranked number two in the nation
for its customer participation rates, coming in at 6.2 percent.
Throughout the past year, MPS has received much
national recognition for its Capture The Wind® program. Along with having
the highest percentage of customers participating in a renewable energy
program in the nation, NREL has also acknowledged MPS for charging the
third-lowest premium for a customer-driven wind energy program. Last month,
MPS’s general manager, Bill Schwandt, accepted the 2001 Energy Innovator
Award on behalf of the utility at the American Public Power Association’s
(APPA) annual conference in Washington, D.C. APPA created the award in 1981
to honor community-owned electric utilities that have made outstanding
advances in the development or application of highly creative
energy-efficient techniques and technologies.
Moorhead Public Service’s first wind turbine,
Zephyr, began generating electricity on May 14, 1999. To date, MPS and its
Capture The Wind® members have effectively prevented the emission of over 6,743,000
pounds of greenhouse gases. MPS anticipates
the second turbine will be erected and generating electricity by the end of
this summer, at which point the two turbines should harvest about 3,600,000
kWh of wind energy each year.
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