By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
Invenergy is one of the largest wind energy producers in North America. Its holdings include the Buckeye Wind Energy Center, 1043 Buckeye Road, about 13 miles northwest of Hays.
The wind farm opened in December 2015. It was developed by and is owned and operated by Invenergy.
The 112 GE wind turbines, which are 300 feet tall with 160-foot blades, are spread across 25,000 acres and have a capacity of 200 megawatts of electrical production per hour.
There are 13 full-time employees, and Ellis County's annual economic impact is estimated at $3 million. The project contributes to the local economy through annual payments to Ellis County, lease payments to landowners and salaries to local employees.
A long-term power purchase agreement sends half the project output to Lincoln, Nebraska and the other half to western Kansas.
The generated power goes through eight underground feeder lines into the nearby Midwest Energy Post Rock substation and then onto the electrical grid.
Nolan Schmeidler, who started working at the wind farm as a technician, is the operations and maintenance manager.
Schmeidler's duties include conducting informational presentations about Buckeye Wind Energy Center and wind power. On Tuesday, the guests were a class of David Wildeman's earth science students from Ellis High School.
"I want students to realize the difference between renewable and nonrenewable sources of energy," Wildeman told Hays Post, "and how the need for sustainable energy is so important with the growing demand for energy and trying to keep up with the exponential growth of the human population globally."
Back in their classroom, the high school science students will create a group project in which they present the pros and cons of wind energy for this area.
"A wind turbine is essentially a sophisticated windmill with a generator at the top, similar to the much smaller windmills still used in rural areas for pumping water," Schmeidler, a former local farmhand and oilfield worker, told the group.
About two-thirds of the Buckeye technicians are former students of Cloud County Community College's wind energy technology program in Concordia.
Schmeidler gave a brief history of the facility and then launched into more technical aspects of its generating power and how the turbines are maintained by local technicians and specialized contractors, as needed.
He also showed several tools used by the technicians during their tower maintenance and their safety equipment.
Most of the facility itself is under high security, uses proprietary information and is off-limits to the public.
With regular maintenance and repower component replacements, the lifespan of the wind turbines averages 20 to 25 years and beyond, Schmeidler said. "It's like overhauling a car. Gut it and rebuild it."
Old turbines are decommissioned and removed from the landowner's property, which the wind energy company returns to its original state.
Recycling some components is becoming more prevalent as the wind power industry grows.
"The fiberglass blades are recyclable," Schmeidler said. "It's used a lot in concrete, and they're now using them as power poles. Of course, there's recycling of all the steel. It's not like their towers are just cut down, and they go sit somewhere.
"We look forward to where we can go from there."
He also said the industry is becoming more gender-neutral, especially for technicians, as equipment becomes smaller and lighter. He estimated about 10% of wind turbine technicians are women, and the number is growing.
Questions from the group ranged from why some regions' governing bodies have opposed wind farm installations to where the industry is going in the future.
"Not every place is conducive for wind. We do many studies. (Research into the feasibility of the Ellis County location began in 2008.) We'll go many years before (construction) and do a wind study. If it even looks feasible, then the wheels start getting in motion. It's a process and doesn't happen overnight," Schmeidler said.
"A lot of it goes back to different county zoning and whether county commissioners are supportive in the first place. Fortunately, for Ellis County, we got on board with it, and I think it's benefited the county greatly."
