POWER PLAY
Western Farmers Electric Cooperative adds to its capacity using cutting-edge technology
One of Oklahoma's biggest electric cooperatives is juicing up its power capacity using cutting-edge technology.
On Tuesday, Western Farmers Electric Cooperative announced it executed a power purchase agreement with NextEra Energy Resources that includes 200 megawatts of battery-stored energy and will take the capacity of its generating fleet to more than 3 gigawatts.
Gary Roulet, the cooperative's CEO, said Tuesday the project will help the cooperative boost the amount of reliable, lowcost and environmentally friendly energy it provides its customers.
“With the prices of wind and solar energy lower than ever, we are now able to pair those with battery storage to make more affordable, renewable energy available to customers for more hours of the day — even when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining,” he said.
Cooperative officials also said they expect the battery unit to be the first of i ts type active within the Southwest Power Pool when it becomes operational in 2023.
“Wind has the tendency to blow during nighttimes, while solar generates its energy during the day,” said Phil Schaeffer, the cooperative's principal resource planning engineer. “We are really hoping to see how battery storage interacts with that whole profile.
“Hopefully, that will translate to better grid stability.”
Storage project
The power purchase agreement between Western Farmers and NextEra cements plans to complete what the developer stated will be the largest combined wind, solar and energy storage project in the U.S.
The agreement announced Tuesday, Schaeffer agreed, could be the first of many similar projects across the Great Plains to generate power for the Southwest Power Pool regional transmission organization.
Currently, more t han 6,600 megawatts of storage projects are in some phase of development in the pool's area, which covers parts or al l of 1 4 states from Oklahoma to the U.S.Canadian border.
The Next Era project, called Skeleton Creek, will be located in Garfield, Alfalfa and Major counties and will become operational
in phases.
The first piece, Skeleton Creek Wind, will have the capacity to generate 250 megawatts of wind energy when it comes online at the end of this year.
Skeleton Creek Solar will have the capacity to generate 250 megawatts of solar energy. It and the final piece of 200 megawatts of storage, called Skeleton Creek Storage, are expected to become operational in 2023. Officials said the batteries will be able to supply power for four hours on a full charge.
The combined project is expected to generate about 1.8 million megawatt hours of energy annually.
While Schaeffer said the cooperative is interested in learning about storage's operational and maintenance advantages and challenges, NextEra CEO John Ketchum said Tuesday he had no doubt the cooperative will see its benefits.
“With t his combined facility, we can optimize and maximize the amount of low-cost, emissions-free electricity we provide while helping Western Farmers diversify its power generation portfolio, reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and set a great example for others to follow,” Ketchum said.
Western Farmers, based in Anadarko, was organized in 1941 and includes 21 distributive cooperatives, plus Altus Air Force Base.
The cooperative signed its first power purchase agreement for about 74 megawatts of wind power with developers of t he Blue Canyon Wind Farm near Lawton in 2003. It added its first solar power in 2016.
In 2018, Western Farmers generated about 6 million megawatt hours of power, while its customers consumed nearly 13 million megawatt hours during the same period.
Official son Tuesday didn't provide contract specifics about the power purchase agreement involving Next Era and Western Farmers, but confirmed a typical agreement usually lasts about 20 years.
They said the cooper at ive' s generation portfolio once Skeleton Creek is operational will consist of 521 megawatts of solar generation, 955 megawatts of wind generation and 270 megawatts of hydroelectric generation, adding that about 50% of Western Farmers' capacity will include facilities that use wind, solar or water to generate power. In all, the cooperative will have about 3,500 megawatts of generating capacity once Skeleton Creek is completely operational.