The Public Service Commission will hold a hearing on the re-power of a wind farm in Ward County.
It’s the 'Prairie Winds ND 1' project, south of Minot. It's owned by Basin Electric Power Cooperative.
The project had originally been approved in 2009. It was comprised of seven turbines, rated at 115.5 megawatts.
Basin filed for the re-power in May of this year, to remove and replace the existing 1.5 megawatt turbines.
"They want to replace them with 1.6 megawatt generator technology," said Commissioner Jill Kringstad. "It includes new rotator diameter blades, hubs and gear boxes. Existing towers and foundations and turbine locations will be reused, so the project will not affect the layout, or expand the site boundary."
Kringstad said this is the first time since she’s been on the Commission that there is going to be a formal hearing on a wind farm re-power.
"Typically, in the past, I think there have been informal hearings for re-powering cases," Kringstad said. "For this one, there's been some interest in it."
Kringstad said the PSC did receive a formal request for a hearing.
"So we just said, based on the interest that we're hearing, we're just going ahead and scheduling a formal hearing," said Kringstad.
That hearing is scheduled for Thursday, August 20, at 9am at the Sleep Inn and Suites in Minot.
