The Sacramento Municipal Utility District continues to expand its harvest of Sacramento Delta wind with a $215 million upgrade that includes the tallest wind turbines in the state.
The utility’s new 19 turbines produce enough electricity for 40,000 homes, compared to the 23 turbines they replace, which produced enough electricity for 7,000 homes.
“These turbines are pivotal in our journey toward a completely carbon-free power supply by 2030,” said SMUD CEO Paul Lau, in a news release.
The new towers reach to 590 feet high and are “the tallest wind turbines in the state,” said Gama Ortiz, SMUD spokesman, in an interview.
The project, known as the Solano 4 Wind Project, produces up to 85.5 megawatts of electricity, and it's starting up as SMUD is already working on the development of the Solano 5 Wind Project.
The existing Solano Wind projects combined can generate 300 megawatts of electricity. A megawatt is enough electricity to power about 750 homes.
The new wind turbines are manufactured by Denmark-based Vestas, which has installed wind farms in more than 80 countries. Part of Vestas' contract includes repurposing the existing wind turbines at other locations in California, said Blake Heinlein, a project manager with SMUD.
The new wind turbines’ larger blade size and overall height allows them to generate more electricity from even lower wind speeds than the turbines they replace, said Lora Anguay, SMUD’s chief zero carbon officer.
Wind power from the steady Delta breezes mixes nicely with SMUD’s expanding solar photovoltaic assets because the wind tends to come up in the afternoon and last through the night, which is when solar production wanes.
The Solano 4 Wind Project is a win for SMUD because it delivers a dramatic increase in generation from the exact same footprint of an earlier project, Heinlein said. Solano 5, which will be about 108 megawatts, will likely begin generating power in 2029, he said. The permitting process on these projects takes a long time because SMUD seeks buy-in from local communities.
Wind tends to be strong through the Delta starting in the afternoon and then continuing through most of the night, with wind dying down around dawn on most days. At today’s unveiling of the new towers, the towers were generating a full output at a couple hours after sunrise, Heinlein said.
Excess power from the turbines will be stored in utility scale batteries SMUD is developing, and SMUD will incent its customers with battery storage and electric vehicles to charge them at night, Anguay said.
In 2021, SMUD announced its plan to achieve zero-carbon electricity districtwide by 2030, which is 15 years ahead of the state’s deadline of 2045 to achieve a zero-carbon electric grid. California's zero carbon goal is among the most aggressive of any state. The SMUD plan isn’t just net-carbon zero. It calls for the elimination of the use of all fossil fuels by the district, which is an effort by the utility to address air pollution in the district.
