In October 2000, Anderson County, Tennessee became home to the first commercial wind generation facility in the southeastern United States: The Buffalo Mountain Wind Farm. After an expansion in 2004, the wind farm produces enough electricity to power nearly 4,000 homes. But it started considerably smaller.
Establishing a Wind Project on a Former Strip Mine in the Southeastern United States
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a federal corporation and the nation’s largest public power company, built a three-turbine wind farm on a former strip mine site on Buffalo Mountain, a high ridge located just outside the municipality of Oak Ridge, in Oliver Springs, TN. The 660-kilowatt capacity turbines generate 4,000 megawatt hours of electricity annually, enough to power approximately 400 homes.
Located on a former strip mine operated the site was operated during the 1980s by the Coal Creek Mining and Manufacturing Company. When the mine ceased operations in 1990, the company completed reclamation activities, including backfilling and revegetating the strip-mined areas. Then, TVA approached the Coal Creek Mining Company about the possibility of siting wind turbines on the property. Coal Creek had an opportunity to explore an innovative reuse and generate revenue from an idle property.
The experiment started small: Three wind turbines were installed on Buffalo Mountain in 2000. As part of TVA’s Green Switch Program, a program developed to provide customers with access to renewable energy resources, the turbines provide power to residential and business customers through a renewable energy network. As of April 2003, the three turbines had produced 9,500 megawatt hours of electricity.
As a result of the wind farm’s success, in 2004 TVA added 15 large turbines expanding the wind farm’s capacity from two to 29 megawatts. Over a 20-year period, TVA is purchasing the energy generated by the new turbines as part of a $60 million power-purchase agreement made with the turbine developers, Invenergy Wind LLC.
The original 3 turbines were removed in 2021, and TVA announced that the remaining 15 wind turbines operated by Invenergy LLC will continue to generate electricity. You can learn more about Buffalo Mountain here and listen to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast to catch our featured Wind Farm of the Week!
