Meade rejects wind power plan

? A southwest Kansas city has rejected a plan to use wind turbines for power generation.

City officials said Friday that they hadn’t had enough time to consider the proposal.

Kansas Wind Power, of Lenexa, last month proposed installing two wind turbines to generate about three megawatts of power, similar to a plan officials in Hoisington accepted.

But the company sought a response by Dec. 15, and Mayor Elaine Post said that wasn’t enough time to investigate whether it was cost effective.

“We’re excited about it, but the time element was against us,” Post said.

But she said that Meade remained open to the possibility of wind power in the future.

“We have good wind,” she said, noting that a 110 megawatt wind farm is owned by FPL Energy near Montezuma in neighboring Gray County. “Montezuma is just up the road a piece.”

Meade gets part of its energy from a natural gas-fired power plant it owns and the rest from the CMS Electricity Cooperative. The two wind turbines would have offset part of the energy from those sources.

Natural gas is used in many of the power plants that provide energy in Kansas. But as its cost has risen, wind power has become increasingly competitive. Kansas Wind Power has been negotiating agreements with municipal power providers throughout central and western Kansas to meet part of their energy needs through wind power.

Company head Troy Helming says the first phase of the plans calls for putting wind turbines in Larned, Russell, Winfield, Augusta and at Emporia State University next year.