Dairyland Power signs PPA in Wisconsin

Barbara Nick, Dairyland President and CEO, has announced that Dairyland will purchase the energy from a 98 MW wind project in southwestern Wisconsin, USA.

Dairyland has reached a power purchase agreement (PPA) with EDP Renewables LLC which will develop, operate and maintain the Quilt Block Wind Farm, located 20 miles southeast of Platteville.

The project is currently working through the MISO generation interconnect process. Construction is expected to begin in 2017, with commercial operation beginning toward the end of that year.

 Barbara Nick, Dairyland President and CEO, said:

"At last year's annual meeting, I announced that Dairyland was pursuing up to 25 MW of solar energy. This year, as we celebrate our 75^th year of serving our members, we demonstrate that we do what we say. Ground is breaking on our 12 solar energy projects in western Wisconsin. Dairyland's growing solar and wind initiatives are key components of our strategic objective of Resource Diversification—essentially, less coal, with more renewables and low-emitting generation sources. Having said that, our existing coal facilities—complete with $300 million in environmental control technology—are still essential to reliability."

"This is a prime example of meeting today's challenges, while staying true to our core mission—powering communities and empowering members to improve the quality of life with safe, sustainable, reliable and competitively-priced electricity," 

Dairyland's total net generation and purchased power decreased from 6.5 billion kWh in 2014 to 5.9 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2015. A mild winter and decreased energy use by some commercial customers contributed to lower energy loads.