BP to Start Building Three U.S. Wind Farms This Year and Next

March 03, 2010, 1:39 PM EST

By Eduard Gismatullin

March 3 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc, which has eight wind farms in the U.S., will start building three more in 2010 and 2011 as it expects to begin profiting from the operations this year.

BP Alternative Energy plans to start construction of the Goshen North wind park in Idaho at the end of the first quarter, the London-based company said in the February issue of its in- house Horizon magazine. The 124.5-megawatt facility will be completed later this year.

Next year, BP will build the 200-megawatt Golden Hills I wind farm in Oregon and the 250-megawatt Cedar Creek II project in Colorado. The Cedar Creek venture is 67 percent owned by Infigen Energy, the Australian wind-power producer formerly known as Babcock & Brown Wind Partners.

“In wind we focus the business in the U.S.,” BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward told investors in London yesterday. “We expect this business to become cash-flow positive this year.”

BP has more than 1,200 megawatts of gross “spinning capacity” in the U.S., Hayward said. One megawatt can supply about 800 average homes in the country, according to Energy Department data.

Source: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-03/bp-to-start-building-three-u-s-wind-farms-this-year-and-next.html