Officials with Iowa’s largest utility unveiled plans today to add two new wind farms in the state. They’ll be built in Ida and O’Brien Counties, both in northwest Iowa.
Ruth Comer is a spokesperson for MidAmerican Energy. “This will be the first wind farm of any kind in Ida County, located near Ida Grove. We’re going to build 134 turbines there,” Comer said. The other project involves 104 turbines and it will be MidAmerican’s second wind farm in O’Brien County.
“We currently have the Highland wind farm under construction in O’Brien County. We’re scheduled to complete that at the end of 2015,” Comer said. “Then, in 2016, we’ll get started on a second wind farm we’re calling O’Brien.” The two new projects will add up to 552 megawatts of wind generation capacity, according to Comer. With the addition of the Ida Grove and O’Brien wind farms, MidAmerican Energy will operate wind farms in 23 Iowa counties.
“By the end of 2016, when these two newest projects are completed, we’ll have more than 2,000 wind turbines across the state,” Comer said. In 2014, Iowa generated more than 28 percent of its electricity from wind — more than any other state in the country.