Black Oak Wind Farm, LLC, plans to construct seven 2.3 megawatt wind turbines built by General Electric, in total producing 16.1 megawatts, on approximately 1,000 acres of land. All electricity produced on the farm, which is enough to power about 5,000 local households, have been purchased by Cornell.
Tectonic provided geotechnical and environmental support services for the project consisting of the seven wind turbines and associated collector systems, a collection station, a substation and access roads. The investigation identified the engineering properties of the site soils and bedrock necessary for the design of the turbine foundations, electrical grounding and buried electrical transmission lines. These services included the preparation of the geotechnical components of the geology, soils and topography section and the groundwater components of the water resources section of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS).
Test borings, Multi-Analysis of Surface Wave (MASW) testing, thermal resistivity testing, electrical resistivity surveys and laboratory soil testing were completed and a report with recommendations for the design and construction of the turbine and substation foundations was prepared.
Tectonic also performed a Phase 1 Environmental Site Assessment (ESA) for each of the seven wind turbine parcels spread geographically over the site and also conducted limited Phase II soil sampling to expedite screening for past agricultural practices to advance the project development schedule.