T. Boone Pickens and Texas may be the kings of Big Wind but California is catching up, buying gigawatts of green electricity from turbines planted on the windswept flatlands of … Oregon.
On Monday, Southern California Edison became the latest Golden State utility to look north, announcing a 20-year contract to buy a whopping 909 megawatts from Caithness Energy’s Shepherd’s Flat project. The 303-turbine wind farm will span two Oregon counties and 30 square miles when it goes online between 2011 and 2012. PG&E (PCG), meanwhile, signed a deal in July for 240 megawatts of wind power from Horizon Wind Energy’s turbine ranch in the same area. That’s on top of 85 megawatts it agreed to buy last year from PPM Energy (now called Iberdrola Renewables) in a neighboring county that’s part of a turbine tier of counties on Oregon’s northern border. Earlier this month the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power approved a 72-megawatt contract with Willow Creek Energy for wind power from the same area in Oregon.
So why ship electricity a thousand miles down the West Coast when California already plans to add gigawatts of in-state wind energy? In a word, transmission.
“The beauty of this particular project is that it is already fully permitted and has transmission already available,” Stuart Hemphill, Southern California Edison’s (EIX) vice president for renewable and alternative power, told Green Wombat.
“Oregon has a terrific wind resource,” he adds. “It far exceeds that in California.”
In December 2006 the utility signed an agreement to purchase 1,500 megawatts from a giant wind farm to be built by a subsidiary of Australia’s Allco Financial Group in Southern California’s Tehachapi region. But the project is dependent on the construction of new transmission lines – often an environmentally contentious and drawn-out process in California.
“It is expected to go online in 2010,” says Hemphill of the wind farm. “We’re just getting the transmission project up and running. The first three segments have been approved and we’re doing the building now.”
With California’s investor-owned utilities facing a 2010 deadline to obtain 20% of their electricity from renewable sources, expect the Oregon green rush to continue.
I LOVE Windmills They help keep away all those Pesky Birds!
Birds? Seriously.. what is with all the environmentalists complaining about solar and wind power these days? Would you rather coal? seriously? People are not going to stop using energy… and Billy you are using a computer that uses energy so you are no exception. This is a better option. Be happy about that!
909 Megawatts produced by 303 winds mills. 3 Megawatts per windmill. Is that for real.
California is improving but has along way to go with regards to energy efficiency. Imagine all the wasted thermal energy from their wildfires; to say nothing of all the wasted wind energy from the updrafts over those fires.
According to Southern California Edison, the wind developer aims to put 3-megawatt turbines on the farm. If they put in less powerful turbines, the total amount of electricity supplied to SCE will decline, of course.
David,
In my experience most of the comments about birds, etc, are not from environmentalists (who know better) — they are from right-wing trolls who are trying to smear the environmental movement by posing as environmentalists and deliberately saying stupid things.
-Jeremy
Dreamdeceiver,
The latest GE models output 3.6 Megawatts. Seimens has a similar 3.2 Megawatt model.
Classic case of Not In My Backyard. 🙂
Everyone wants electricitiy – no one wants to see it produced or transmitted through their “neighborhood.”
Lotsa’ luck…..