Wind turbines stand out from the colorful sky of the location sunlight at a wind farm in the rolling prairie hills a several miles northwest of Crown Butte Lake in Morton County.
Mike McCleary
The North Dakota Community Company Commission on Wednesday denied a wind farm’s request for an extension to install technological know-how that would preserve the lights atop its turbines from blinking brilliant red all night very long.
Avangrid Renewables owns Rugby Wind and sought extra time to comply with the state’s regulation demanding light-weight mitigation engineering atop wind farm turbines. The firm was fascinated in putting in a technique on the Pierce County wind farm that would dim the lights at night based on visibility disorders, but the technological innovation has not been given acceptance from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Its manufacturer is trying to find permission from the FAA, but Commission Chair Julie Fedorchak said acceptance is unlikely to occur in time for Rugby Wind to meet even an prolonged deadline by the close of 2022. As a result, the wind farm will need to have to comply with the current deadline of the conclude of this 12 months and put in a radar-dependent method that retains the lights off at night until an plane flies in the vicinity.
The wind farm operator advised the PSC the dimming method would be cheaper than the radar procedure but that due to the uncertainty, it would make an expedited ask for to a vendor to set up the radar-centered engineering.


The PSC earlier this 12 months authorised an extension for 1 wind farm operated by Montana-Dakota Utilities intrigued in the dimming technological know-how. But commissioners indicated at the time that they would not always grant each individual very similar request that arrived their way, and they’ve learned much more about the FAA procedure given that then.
