Great River Energy and Apex Clean Energy have signed an agreement to obtain renewable energy from a 400 MW wind farm in McLean County, North Dakota. The Discovery Wind project will be North Dakota’s largest wind project, with commercial operations planned in 2025. It would supply renewable energy across a 436-mile high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) transmission system.
According to the reports, the project is expected to meet a large portion of Great River Energy’s renewable energy needs and deliver wind energy west of the Twin Cities as part of the company’s power supply transition. In 2020, the electric cooperative announced plans to phase out the last coal-fired power plants and increase its renewable energy production. Great River Energy is also working on converting the coal-fired Spiritwood Station power plant near Jamestown, North Dakota, to a natural gas-fired power plant and developing a 1 MW multi-day grid battery in Cambridge, Minnesota.
In February 2021, Ares Management Corporation announced that Ares’ Infrastructure and Power group had acquired the 302 MW Lincoln Land Wind project from Apex Clean Energy in Morgan County, Illinois.
