Craig Davison, For The News-Dispatch
LA CROSSE - Southwestern La Porte County will soon have its second meteorological tower.
A Kansas-based company is planning to erect a 197-foot tower on West County Road 2100 South in Dewey Township, about five and a half miles from where the first tower was installed just west of La Crosse in early September.
The La Porte County Board of Zoning Appeals approved the request of La Crosse Farms Wind Project LLC to install the second tower at a meeting Tuesday night.
The towers will collect data over the next few years to see if the area would support a wind turbine farm.
"We need to read and judge the wind on the west side of the project area and on the east side of the project area," said Paul Smith, a lease specialist with TradeWind Energy. "We went ahead with the second tower because the first tower indicated that we had sufficient wind in that area to do our project."
The tower, which is identical to the first, is supported by eight guide wires, Smith said, and is powered by batteries and solar panels.
Development Manager Rich Polich told the board that once the tower received approval, it would be assembled as soon as possible.
Smith said there are plans down the road for two more meteorological towers to test winds in the area, but they might not be necessarily located in La Porte County.
Polich previously estimated that a turbine farm in Dewey Township could generate 150 to 200 megawatts of power.
Smith said they always put two towers in a project area to test the wind. They erected one tower first to see if there was enough winds to make the investment to install the second tower.
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