Jun 4 2015
EDF Renewable Energy announced today that the 200-megawatt (MW) Longhorn Wind Project in Texas reached commercial operation on May 1, 2015.
Longhorn Wind Project (200 MW) in Texas (Photo: Business Wire)
The Project, spanning 33,000 acres in Floyd and Briscoe counties, is comprised of 100 Vestas V-100 wind turbine generators with a rated capacity of 2 MW each. Renewable Energy Systems Americas Inc. (RES) developed and constructed the project, which utilizes the CREZ (Competitive Renewable Energy Zone) transmission infrastructure to deliver the low-cost renewable generation resources of West Texas and the Texas Panhandle to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) market.
“Longhorn represents EDF Renewable Energy’s fifth project to be placed in service in Texas in the past three years bringing our installed capacity in the state to 872 megawatts,” commented Ryan Pfaff, Executive Vice President of EDF Renewable Energy. “We are particularly pleased to be up and running in Floyd and Briscoe Counties, and look forward to working closely with the local community throughout the life of the Longhorn Wind Project.”
Andrew Fowler, Chief Operating Officer for RES Americas, added, “RES continues its commitment to growing the Texas economy by creating many jobs with the construction workforce peaking at 250, 14 permanent jobs for operations and maintenance, and spending nearly $3.5M in the local community during construction. Longhorn is our 18th completed project in the Lone Star State and marks our first construction project with EDF RE. We look forward to continuing to work with EDF RE to provide secure and sustainable energy solutions in the future.”
Longhorn Wind will generate enough electricity to power approximately 55,000 homes – according to US Energy Environmental Protection Agency methodology – avoiding approximately 375,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year, the equivalent of the annual emissions from approximately 80,000 passenger vehicles. Longhorn’s output is sold to a creditworthy counterparty under a long-term, fixed-price energy purchase agreement.
EDF Renewable Services, the leading provider of renewable operations and maintenance services in North America, will provide balance-of-plant operations and maintenance for the facility including 24/7 remote monitoring from its NERC compliant Operations Control Center (OCC). The OCC provides an efficient, reliable, and secure operating platform, while benefiting from the centralization of SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) functions and consolidation of multiple vendor SCADA environments to provide a common operating view. EDF Renewable Services has over 1.3 GW under contract in Texas.