RECC, Illinois, United States

The Rural Energy Convenience Cooperative (RECC) is a member-owned, not-for-profit business in the American state of Illinois. Its purpose is providing electricity to rural homes and farms. The co-op has 380 members and serves 5,800 customers.

To reduce the amount of power they had to purchase from their wholesale power supplier, RECC procured an EWT 900kW-DW54 wind turbine. Electricity generated by the turbine costs less than the average cost of the co-op’s wholesale energy supply, as there is no fuel cost involved. On the wholesale market, the power price is expected to rise steadily. But the energy cost from the wind turbine will increase only slightly, for example when labour prices for turbine maintenance go up.

All electricity generated by the EWT wind turbine, on average 2,300 megawatthours per year, is used by RECC members. The turbine is connected to the local substation, and from there on distributed to the co-op members served from that substation in the surrounding area. The power output equates to about 5% the total demand on the co-op’s energy system on a hot day.

RECC President David Stuva said: “The EWT wind turbine is very popular with our members. We needed something around 1 megawatt because that was the average load on the nearby substation, so EWT was a good fit for us. They have done everything they said they would do. They went above and beyond on standing behind their product. We benefit from the maintenance contract we have with them. They monitor the wind turbine from The Netherlands, and we don’t have to worry about anything. I give them an A+ on service.”

Project specifications

Location: Illinois, US       

Industry: Community       

Wind Turbines : 1   

Type: DW54 900kW       

Commissioning date: 2009

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