Sixty-three aging 850-kilowatt turbines will be replaced by twenty-nine 2.6-megawatt turbines at wind site in Illinois

This might be the future of wind repowering in the United States. In a first-of-its-kind project, the owner of a pioneering Illinois wind farm will bring down an aging fleet of 15-year-old turbines in a process akin to trees being logged in a forest. The Mendota Hills site, in operation since 2003, was the first utility-scale wind farm in Illinois. The project owner, Dallas-based Leeward Renewable Energy, is replacing sixty-three 850-kilowatt Gamesa turbines with twenty-nine 2.6-megawatt turbines from Siemens Gamesa. The new project will increase power capacity at the site from just over 50 megawatts to 76 megawatts.In an interview, CEO Greg Wolf told Greentech Media that Leeward is exploring repowering opportunities across its portfolio. Seventeen of the company’s 19 wind farms are beyond their 10-year Production Tax Credit (PTC) period. Mendota Hills is the oldest operating wind farm in its portfolio.