Bringing Community Owned Wind Power to Oklahoma Using School Districts
Abstract
From the demand for wind-produced energy, wind farms have been installed across the nation. The majority of large-scale wind farms are corporate owned. Community owned wind farms differ in that they are a locally owned asset. With the large number of people within the community involved, reaching agreements and working together while also maintaining project support can slow or end implementation plans. The complexity of community owned wind power production could be overcome by targeting school districts for implementation. Schools are a logical starting place for development because they offer a variety of people and skill sets, and pre-existing collaboration within the school and community. Schools provide the unity needed for success. Support for community owned wind power using school districts would increase if Oklahomans could be shown what drives the success of these communities already taking advantage of school based wind power production. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to establish the probability for the success of implementation in Oklahoma by first finding the drivers behind successful production of current wind power installed in schools. A variety of statistics and regression analyses were used to analytically produce a reliable list of significant drivers for successful implementation of wind power production. Through a three-step statistical analysis, a final multivariate regression model was chosen resulting in the final regression equation. By this equation, it is known that the only potential variable that has any effect on the dependent variable is the grant assistance received by each school site. Community wind projects need funding, but by using school districts as location sites the payback period is not as strong of a focus. School's do not necessarily have to first show profitability of the project, only that they can afford the upfront costs and then over time (a longer period than needed in a commercial wind project) make a profit.The cluster analysis results showed one group of school sites spatial encompassing Oklahoma. By focusing on the high level similarities seen in this cluster, the beginnings of what Oklahoma should focus on for implementation is already given.
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- OSU Theses [15752]