How Much Energy Do The Windmills On Lake Erie Generate?

Sometimes it's easy to forget how unique the place we live is. Existing on the confluence of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, with Ontario's Golden Horseshoe just a stone's throw away, Western New York's position gives us access to some amazing benefits.

Not only is having one of the largest sources of fresh water at our fingertips a great thing, but some of the side benefits we get from it are great; chief among them being the large amounts of hydropower we're able to generate from Niagara Falls. From moving billions of gallons of water to generate millions of kilowatts of electricity, the Western New York region is responsible for providing a large chunk of energy to the Empire State.

As much energy is generated from the waters of Lake Erie, it's not the only clean energy that comes to our region. Right along the shore of Lake Erie, there is a series of windmills that sit on the site of the old Bethlehem Steel in Lackawanna.

How Much Electricity Do The Windmills On Lake Erie Generate?

Sprawling for more than 1,300 acres, the former Bethlehem Steel site in Lackawanna, New York, employed more than 20,000 workers who generated millions of tons of steel for America as the country grew. In the years since the site lay vacant, it has found some new life as the home of 14 windmills that now add quite a bit of additional clean energy to the Western New York economy.

The Steel Winds Power Facility has 14 windmills with a power generation capacity of around 2.5 megawatts each, for a total capacity of around 35 megawatts.

Driving by these windmills along Route 5, it's an amazing feat to see that these windmills generate enough energy to power more than 50,000 homes, which, with the cost of electricity these days, seems like a good thing.