One of the world’s largest wind power projects – right here in Prowers County!
Humans have used the power of the wind for thousands of years – wind powered boats sailed the waters and mills ground grain into flour and pumped water from the ground. Today, here in Prowers County, wind powers the largest wind farm in Colorado. The 162 megawatt Colorado Green Wind Power Project, located 20 miles south of the Town of Lamar, was developed to help meet Colorado’s demand for renewable electricity. Completed in late 2003, the project utilizes 108 GE 1.5 MW wind turbines, the largest assembled in America. The project is owned by PPM Energy, Inc. and Shell WindEnergy Inc. in a 50/50 joint venture.
The Colorado Green development was born through a competitive bidding process initiated by Public Service of Colorado where it competed with others forms of electricity generation including natural gas and coal fired generation and was found to be the lowest cost alternative.
Power up with the wind!
What better place to harvest the wind than the windy prairies of southeastern Colorado. Dotted over the years by a variety of historic water-pumping windmills used by pioneers when settling in this part of the country, today the area blends its historic past with a progressive future. The Colorado Green Project resides on about 11,000 acres used as a working cattle ranch. Less than 2% of the project’s land area is used by the actual footprint of the wind turbines, leaving most of the land available for other purposes, including ranching and grazing – or, as the ranchers tell the story, the spaced used by the wind turbines translates to one less cow
Turbine Facts:
Manufactured by GE in Tehachapi, California, the Colorado Green Project’s 1.5 MW turbines are the largest wind turbines assembled in the United States
The Colorado Green Project is expected to produce enough wind-generated electricity to serve about 52,000 average American homes.
Turbine Height: 328 feet – taller than a 32-story building!
Over 294 cubic yards of concrete was used to complete each of the Project’s wind turbine foundations – that’s more than 47,400 tons to complete all 108 foundations, or 4,741 full concrete truckloads.
The Project’s wind turbines make one revolution every 2 to 3 seconds.
Each Colorado Green wind turbine blade is 112 feet long. A rotor is composed of three blades and has a diameter of 231 feet – 10% longer than the wingspan of a Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet
How does it work?
The rotor blades of a wind turbine work somewhat like the wings of an airplane. As air passes over the specially designed blades “lift” is created. This lift, in turn, sends the blades spinning in a circular motion, which drives an electric generator. When winds reach about 8 miles per hour, the rotor is engaged and the wind turbine begins producing power.
We found this area amazing, facinating, and one of the coolest unexpected places we have been in a while
We hope you will find it as amazing and worth the drive as we did!
Please make sure to respect the area and all signs etc. Thanks!