Study ranks Kansas 2nd in nation for wind power
Published 2/23/2010 in Local News

By Dion Lefler

The Wichita Eagle

(MCT) — For years, Gov. Mark Parkinson has been telling anyone who would listen that Kansas has the third-largest potential in the nation for generating wind power.

Now, he’ll have to rewrite his speech.

Kansas is now No. 2 for wind potential, according to data released Friday by the Department of Energy.

The new study vaulted Kansas and Texas — the new No. 1 — past former wind-potential leader North Dakota, which fell all the way to No. 6 on the new list.

Montana, Nebraska and South Dakota round out the new top five.

The numbers show that Kansas has the potential to generate 3.6 million gigawatt hours of electricity from wind — roughly equivalent to 10 times the power consumed by the state of California in a year.

Kansas’ wind potential was upgraded from earlier estimates of 1 million gigawatt hours.

The governor was delighted.

“This is great news for our state and the entire Midwest,” Parkinson said in an e-mail response to questions from The Eagle. “This latest assessment from the Department of Energy underscores our potential.”

A big reason that Kansas scores so well on wind potential is the amount of land available for windmills, said Michael Brower, a doctor of meteorology and a principal in AWS Truewind. The Albany, N.Y., company performed the wind research underlying the new government estimates.

Kansas’ flat geography helps its wind potential, too.

While other states have good wind along mountain ridgelines, there often isn’t very much space for developing wind farms there, he said.

In Kansas, “just about anywhere you throw a dart at the map, you find a decent wind project site,” he said.