By Dan Shaw, Evansville Courier & Press
Vectren customers are now getting electricity from an Indiana wind farm.
On Tuesday, Vectren Corp. announced that it is distributing power generated at the Benton County Wind Farm in northeast Indiana. The 87 wind turbines there can produce as many as 130 megawatts of electricity. All of them were running by mid-April.
Vectren has agreed to buy 30 of those megawatts and Duke Energy the remaining 100. The wind farm is owned by both Orion Energy Group, a company from Oakland, Calif., and Vision Energy, a company from Cincinnati, Ohio.
They are not the only companies that are undertaking such a project in Benton County. BP Alternative Energy is building the Fowler Ridge wind farm there as well.
The project is being completed in two phases. The first will generate up to 400 megawatts and the second 350 megawatts. Both phases are expected to be finished as soon as 2009. Subsidiaries of American Electric Power have agreed to buy energy from it.
On Tuesday, Vectren estimated that customers will use as much as 1,250 megawatts of its power this summer. The company is prepared to supply that peak demand, being able to generate or buy up to 1,430 megawatts.
And it can obtain an extra 60 megawatts through its Summer Cycler program. In that program, Vectren customers let the company turn off certain appliances remotely during times of peak demand for energy.
Those who enroll in it will be compensated. For every electric air conditioner or heat pump placed in the program, the owner will receive a $5 credit each month between June and September. For every electric water heat, the credit will $2 a month.
To learn more about the Summer Cycler program, call (866) 240-8476 or go to www.vectren.com.
Last month, Vectren said it was backing away from its plans to build a power plant in Gibson County. The plant would have been capable of producing as many as 100 megawatts, which would have been used only at time of peak demand for electricity.
Vectren instead decided to buy the needed power from Sempra Energy, a San Diego company.