East River to Build Lines for Groton Wind Farm

I suppose I can't be too crabby with East River for enjoying a boost in business from the Keystone pipeline, any more than I can begrudge the folks at the Stop-n-Rob for selling more gas and coffee to TransCanada's construction crews.

East River will also get a boost from a big wind project near Groton. Its co-op parent Basin Electric and Florida-based NextEra will put up 66 turbines that will crank out 99 megawatts of green power. NextEra is apparently a good partner: Basin Electric has already worked with them on three other wind farms, including that 27-turbine farm up by Highmore.

The Groton wind farm is intended to help Basin Electric reach its goal of generating 10% of its power from renewable sources. 10%? Is that all? Why not aim for 20%, or even 40%? It sounds like we could build a lot more wind turbines just to provide for power needs here within our own coops on the prairie before we even get to worrying about building transmission lines to export this power to Chicago or other more populous areas. A little cap-and-trade might be just what we need to encourage Basin Electric to boost that goal and capitalize on wind for local use.