OG&E is seeking Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC) approval to build and operate a new 198-MW wind farm in northwestern Oklahoma. If approved, the company would achieve its goal of quadrupling the amount of wind power on its system by 2012. The new wind farm, named "Crossroads," is expected to come online in the second half of 2011.

OG&E set a goal of quadrupling its wind power production in 2008 when it had 170 MW of wind energy on its system. Today, it has 270 MW of wind power capacity and will add 280 additional megawatts from projects slated for completion later this year. With the addition of the Crossroads project, the company will have approximately 751 MW of wind generation capacity.

"The Crossroads project represents the achievement of a very lofty goal," said Howard Motley, vice president of Regulatory Affairs for OG&E. "It also provides another opportunity to add significant renewable generation at the lowest reasonable cost to OG&E customers. By the time the new wind farm is in its third year of operation, it will provide a net savings to all of our residential, municipal and business customers. We project schools will benefit even sooner."

Motley added that the company expects the wind farm will result in an average residential customer seeing an increase of 65-cents per month beginning in 2012, dropping to 9-cents in 2013. More importantly, he said the company projects that the lower cost energy produced from the wind farm should provide a 40-cent decrease in monthly bills in 2014 and reduce bills every year thereafter.

The new, $400 million wind farm, to be developed by RES Americas, will be located in Dewey County, about seven miles north of Taloga. It will have 86 Siemens turbines rated 2.3 megawatts each and will connect with OG&E's new Windspeed transmission line, which was energized March 31.

Once the project is approved, construction would begin shortly thereafter and take about 12 months to complete.