The completion of the 6,000 acre Kit Carson wind farm in northwest of Burlington, Colorado, enables Duke Energy to expand its operational wind generation capacity to nearly 1,000MW at nine wind farms in the US.
Duke Energy has entered into a 20-year power purchase agreement to sell all of the output from the Kit Carson site consisting of 34 1.5MW General Electric wind turbines to serve customers of Tri-State Generation and Transmission’s member electric cooperatives and public power districts.
Duke Energy, which began construction at the Kit Carson Wind Power Project earlier this year, has invested more than $1bn to grow its commercial wind power business over the last three years having completed seven wind power projects in Wyoming, Texas and Pennsylvania prior to 2010.
Kit Carson is the second commercial wind project Duke Energy brought on line in 2010, the first being the 110-turbine, 200MW Top of the World Windpower Project near Casper, Wyoming, that reached commercial operation in October.