Chicago may be the Windy City, but one condominium building there will be getting its electricity from the winds of northern Iowa. Michigan Avenue Tower, a 29-floor residential condo complex, will use power from Midwest Renewable Energy Corporation, where president Steve Dryden says the agreement is a win-win.
Dryden says “In Iowa here, we don’t have too many choices about selling our REC’s, renewable energy credits. It’s kind of a good match because in Chicago, the utilities serving that area doesn’t provide RECs for residential people, so we don’t have the market here and they don’t have the supply.”
He says the deal will help build a wind turbine in Winnebago County, where electricity generated will be put on the power “grid” and sold to the buyers in Chicago.
Dryden says the energy used to power the condo tower will be equal to one-half of a turbine’s annual output, leaving plenty of opportunities for future energy sales as they have ten turbines total. “We’d like to find another 19 parties to do the same.”
Dryden says Midwest Renewable Energy, based in Joice, is looking for other retail customers to purchase energy. Dryden says they spent three months negotiating the agreement with the owners of Chicago’s Michigan Avenue Tower.