(Credit: Radford’s Run Wind Farm)
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) will source energy from the Radford’s Run Wind Farm for its Pittsburgh campus in a move that the university says will support its approach to “responsible financial planning” as well as sustainability. Engie Resources and Amerex Energy Services have jointly designed a structure to procure energy sourced from the Radford’s Run Wind Farm in Macon County, Illinois, to supply all of the campus’s electricity needs.
CMU says the agreements with Engie and Amerex will encourage wind development across the local power grid without having to use the university’s own capital. The move comes after more than a decade of offsetting 100% of its electric power consumption via REC purchases, CMU says.
The structure designed by Engie and Amerex offers the university a 100% renewable, fixed-price load following solution that provides “budget certainty through a simple, standard retail commodity agreement with flexible terms” at competitive prices, according to Amerex.
The agreements run through 2024.
Radford’s Run consists of 139 Vestas 2.2MW turbines and came online in December 2017. It is the largest single-phase wind farm built in Illinois and was the largest wind farm built in the US in 2017.
In other recent news from universities seeking savings from renewable energy, the University of Illinois announced earlier this month that it is preparing to sign a power purchase agreement worth $20.1 million for a 10-megawatt solar farm near the Urbana campus.