The Casselman Wind Power Project, located in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, held its official dedication ceremony on Thursday, October 16th.  Completed in early 2008, this project will generate 34.5 megawatts of clean, emission-free wind energy and will contribute jobs and tax revenue to the local economy.  This 23 turbine project is expected to generate enough electricity to power more than 10,000 homes according to calculations by the American Wind Energy Association.

This project is particularly noteworthy because it was constructed on top of a rehabilitated coal mining area. The Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority supported the Casselman project with a $500,000 grant, helping to reinvigorate this otherwise undesirable land into a productive and viable clean energy project.  The site hosts the wind farm’s operation center, collector transformer and interconnection facility.

In a ground-breaking effort to study the interaction between bats and wind turbines, IBERDROLA RENEWABLES has partnered with an independent conservation group, Bat Conservation International (BCI), for wildlife data collection at the southwestern Pennsylvania wind power project.

BCI’s work is being conducted through the Bats and Wind Energy Cooperative (BWEC; www.batsandwind.org), which is a coalition of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and BCI. The cooperative’s work focuses on identifying and addressing potential wind energy impacts on bats.

From late July to early October, IBERDROLA RENEWABLES, working with BCI researchers, conducted a controlled experiment in which selected wind turbines at the Casselman Wind Power Project were stopped during certain wind conditions. This represents the first U.S.-based effort to study the effects of shutting down turbines on reducing bat deaths.