Wind and Solar Farms Tackle the Variables of The Weather

Grand Ridge, Illinois, population 550, is a small village in the Corn Belt flatlands stretching south and west of Chicago. The weather in Grand Ridge swings just outside the American average. Winters are windy and mostly overcast, while the summer months tend to be calmer and sunnier.

Sunny side up: High-efficiency thin film solar panels were developed at GE’s Global Research Center.

All this makes Grand Ridge the perfect place for a new energy project that aligns wind and solar farms to generate a more reliable source of renewable power. The idea is that when the long nights set in and the breeze kicks up, wind power will replace idled solar capacity. The reverse will occur during long and radiant summer days. “We’ve built 30 gigawatts of wind farms so adding solar is a good utilization of assets,” Vic Abate, vice president of GE’s Renewable Energy business told Forbes last week.