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I not infrequently drive between Chicago and Nashville and I'm struck by how many turbines I pass if I take a route that goes through Indiana. For whatever reas
by JeremyNT 3y ago
I not infrequently drive between Chicago and Nashville and I'm struck by how many turbines I pass if I take a route that goes through Indiana. For whatever reason I see far fewer on the route that stays in Illinois, which isn't very far to the west.
I wonder why this might be? Just a quirk of where the highways run?
Interestingly Illinois actually doesn't have a very large coastline. Would it be sufficient for off shore wind? I guess it is convenient that Chicago is right on the lake, and the city must represent a huge percentage of Illinois power consumption.
- Kon-Peki 3y ago> Just a quirk of where the highways run? Yes, most likely. According to this site [1][2][3], Illinois has almost double the wind generation capacity of Indiana. The average megawatts per site is almost 50% higher. Neither state holds a candle to Iowa, but again with Iowa most of those turbines aren't visible from an interstate. EDIT - This wikipedia page [4] shows a list of large wind farms in the US. Sort it by capacity, and you'll see that the turbines you see on I-65 in Indiana are part of two adjacent farms that each are in the top 15 largest in the US and would be the second largest in the US if considered a single project. [1] https://cleangridalliance.org/focus-areas/projects?gp=indiana&tp=all https://cleangridalliance.org/focus-areas/projects?gp=indian... [2] https://cleangridalliance.org/focus-areas/projects?gp=illinois&tp=all https://cleangridalliance.org/focus-areas/projects?gp=illino... [3] https://cleangridalliance.org/focus-areas/projects?gp=iowa&tp=all https://cleangridalliance.org/focus-areas/projects?gp=iowa&t... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wind_farms_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wind_farms_in_the_Unit...