Windfarms, Alternative Fuels Take Midwest to Leading Edge for July Project Starts

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The Midwest market region of the U.S., consisting of the states of Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, has 59 major industrial projects valued at $2.55 billion planned to kick off this July. The region narrowly edges out the West Coast region, which has 58 projects valued at $2.46 billion, and the Rocky Mountain region, which has $2.44 billion of July project starts spread over 31 projects. Windfarms and Alternative Fuels Industry projects feature prominently among the Midwest's top projects.

Click on image at right for a breakdown by region of the July project starts in the U.S.

The largest-value project in the region is the Logan County Windfarm in North Dakota. The project consists of installing 160 Mitsubishi wind turbine/generators, each with capacities of 2.3 megawatts (MW), to supply the grid with 368 MW of renewable energy. Just Wind LLC (Excelsior, Minnesota) is the owner and developer of the project, and EAPC Architects Engineers is acting as consultant on the project, which has an estimated total investment value (TIV) of $736 million.

Half of the region's top 10 projects involve windfarms, most of which are grassroot projects. The sole exception to this is the expansion of the Elm Creek Windfarm, located northeast of Jackson, Minnesota. The Phase II expansion will add 150 MW of power capacity to the facility, which has a current capacity of 99 MW.

The largest alternative fuels project scheduled to kick off in the region in July is the three-phase construction of a biomethane gas plant in Albert City, Iowa. The facility is planned for construction near an ethanol plant owned by Valero and, after completion of the third phase of construction, will produce 5 billion cubic feet per year of biomethane from ethanol byproducts and chicken litter. Phase I will consist of the construction of four 2 million-gallon digester tanks and a 14-MW combustion unit. The three phases of the project have a combined estimated TIV of $250 million.

While the Power and Alternative Fuels industries occupy the top seven projects starting in the Midwest in July, two Food & Beverage Industry projects feature in the region's top-10 list, with a combined TIV of $83 million. The larger of these is Frito-Lay's (Plano, Texas) addition of an automated storage and retrieval system at the company's warehouse at the snack-foods manufacturing plant in Topeka, Kansas. The Haskell Company (Jacksonville, Florida) is performing design-build work on the project, which is scheduled to be completed in the first quarter of 2011.

Information on these and more than $21 billion of planned July 2010 industrial project starts in North America are available in Industrial Info's North American Industrial Database.

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