Wind Today - Q4 2008 - (Page 40) Update Mendota Hills Wind Farm Update Lee County, IL This article is an update on the Mendota Hills Wind Farm in Lee County, IL. The project was the first wind farm featured in Wind Today back in our First Quarter 2006 premiere issue. Since we visited the Mendota Hills Wind Farm in north central Illinois in the fall of 2005, it has changed ownership and made a slight expansion in capacity. In January 2007, Babcock & Brown acquired the rights to the 63-turbine wind farm from Gamesa, who built the wind farm in 2003. Babcock & Brown is an Australianbased wind energy investor and developer that owns 83 wind farms on three continents. Its U.S. headquarters is in San Francisco, CA. Prior to Babcock & Brown taking over Mendota Hills, Gamesa performed a retrofit on the wind farm’s turbines in 2006 that consisted of replacing the turbines’ original 800 kW RCC generators with 820 kW DFM generators. “It was an improvement to the turbine performance given the wind regime,” says Babcock & Brown Spokesman Matthew Dallas. According to Scott Martin, Mendota Hills project manager, the generator retrofit upped the wind farm’s rating from 50.4 MW to 51.6 MW. Since 2006, Martin says there have been no major operation problems on the wind farm. Martin adds that there are no plans to expand the 2,500-acre Mendota Hills at this time. Throughout the change in ownership at Mendota Hills, says Martin, one thing has remained the same—community support. “We receive a lot of support from the community,” Martin says. “We work hand-in-hand with local landowners to minimize crop damage during necessary repairs, as well as to address any possible issues such as water drainage or erosion problems that may have been caused by the project,” he adds. Heather Ervin, associate editor 40 Response No. 401 WIND TODA Y Fourth Quarter 2008 http://www.highlineproducts.com
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