Wind Farm Installation

Scope

Conducted a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) investigation to locate and map existing clay and plastic drainage tiles along 50 miles of the proposed electrical collection network for new wind farm.

Project Description

EDP Renewables and Kiewit are installing a large wind farm in the vicinity of Losantville, Indiana. A critical component of the wind farm’s infrastructure is the electrical collection network that transfers the electricity generated by each windmill. The wind farm was placed in this area due to the ideal weather and terrain conditions to generate power from wind. The area is characterized by gentle, rolling hills and relatively few trees. It is also primarily comprised of farm land, growing corn, soybean, & turnip. An extremely important part of this farmland infrastructure is the presence of subsurface drainage tiles (aka drainage pipes) that serve to efficiently transfer excess ground water from the fields. As the windmills are being placed in the middle of these crops, the electrical collection network travels through a significant portion of farmland. During installation of the collection network, these existing drainage tiles are at a high risk of damage, posing a significant threat to the health of the drainage system. Vosburg Welsh was hired to identify and map the at-risk drainage tiles using ground penetrating radar along a 50-mile stretch so that they could be protected and/or repaired during collection network construction.

Equipment & Technology Used

Ground Penetrating Radar and EOS Arrow Gold GPS/GNSS Antenna for data collection and location accuracy