Wind Power News: Oregon
These news and opinion items are gathered by National Wind Watch to help keep readers informed about developments related to industrial wind energy. They are the products of the organizations or individuals noted.
State ok’s world’s largest wind farm
State energy officials have approved a plan that would make Gilliam and Morrow counties in northeastern Oregon home to the world’s largest wind farm.
The Shepherds Flat wind farm’s 303 wind turbines will be capable of producing 909 megawatts, or enough electricity to power upward of 225,000 homes, doubling the state’s current output of wind farm electricity, according to Oregon Department of Energy assistant director Diana Enright.
Shepherds Flat also will provide an economic boost to the rural Oregon . . .
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Presentation sparks wind discussion; Residents speak up at city council meeting, opposing wind turbines
Citizens in the Milton-Freewater area took another opportunity to voice their opposition to wind turbines in the Blue Mountains at a city council meeting Monday night.
What started as an informational meeting by Horizon Wind Farms representative Valerie Schafer-Franklin turned into a discussion between citizens both on and off Weston Mountain about what they want to see happen, or not happen, in the Blues.
‘We’re just testing the wind’
To begin with, Schafer-Franklin took a first step on the part . . .
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Ill wind is blowing on Steens Mountain
Until three weeks ago, all I knew about Steens Mountain was that the washboard gravel road leading toward the summit threatened to unhinge my 12-year-old Saturn’s chassis.
I also knew that the mountain, visible from four states, regally crowned Southeast Oregon’s high desert.
Upon ascending the Steens without automotive incident, I became smitten with the area. Steens and the nearby Malheur National Wildlife Refuge are pristine treasures, beautiful in their isolation and ponderous in their majesticism.
It’s the exact type . . .
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Citizens discuss frustration over wind turbines in Blue Mountains
The idea of looking out onto the foothills of the Blue Mountains from Highway 11 or Milton-Freewater and seeing wind turbines sounds like a nightmare for some people who look at that view every day.
But not many of those people have had much of a chance to express their frustration.
Citizen Richard Jolly hosted a meeting Thursday in Milton-Freewater where many people got a chance to vet their frustrations and discuss their concerns. More than 50 people crowded into . . .
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Group discusses wind turbines
Wind turbines in the Blue Mountains is a hot topic for Umatilla County right now — especially in Milton-Freewater.
On Wednesday afternoon, a group of citizens forming the Umatilla County Wind Energy Facilities Subcommittee, tried to arrive at some conclusions about how to approach the sensitive topic.
Of the more than 30 people who filled the media room at the Umatilla County Justice Center, a majority of them seemed to be supporting wind turbine production. Milton-Freewater city citizens, landowners and . . .
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Wind farm plans clash with pristine site in eastern Oregon
Steens Mountain stretches through the open lands of southeastern Oregon’s Harney County for more than 30 miles, a twisting spine of rock and brush punctuated by steep gorges and rushing streams.
Remote and rugged, it has come to symbolize the state’s wild, austere side.
It’s also becoming a battleground for a wind power developer that sees gold in the Steens’ stiff breezes — and red in the eyes of environmentalists.
At issue are about 200 wind turbines that Columbia Energy . . .
State asks whether wind farm projects are separate; Critics say the proposals were divided to avoid scrutiny
Another conflict is stirring over the Steens Mountain projects — one that could bring the force of the state into Harney County’s wind power debate and strain relations between local planners and Oregon regulators.
Chris Crowley, head of Columbia Energy Partners, filed separate applications for the three wind projects he called the Echanis, East Ridge and West Ridge wind farms. They lie next to each other, just outside the northern boundary of the Steens Mountain Wilderness area. Each would generate . . .
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Protecting habitat
I oppose liquefied natural gas. I have witnessed two LNG pipeline fires in the Columbia River Gorge.
I watched as proponents used what seemed to me to be dirty tricks to build the LNG electrical production plant in Goldendale, Wash. My sense of it is that the LNG people will do just about anything to accomplish their goals, and that they are willing to risk all of us to secure their profits.
Wind power has been proposed in letters to . . .
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Wind power surge challenges grid operator
Can there be too much of a good thing when it comes to wind power? The Bonneville Power Administration is confronting that question this summer. The regional grid operator has a pile of new connection requests from wind farm developers. There wouldn’t be much of a story if you could schedule the wind minute–by–minute. But correspondent Tom Banse reports a fickle energy source like this makes life in the control room more interesting.
WHEN YOU FLIP A LIGHT SWITCH, . . .
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California eyes Oregon wind power
California, whose laws require it to get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010, has its eyes on Oregon’s growing wind power industry.
“They’re certainly trying to grab it everywhere they can,” said Lee Beyer, chairman of the Oregon Public Utility Commission.
The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power and Pacific Gas & Electric in San Francisco are among those securing long-term contracts for wind power in Oregon and Washington.
California already imports hydropower in the summer; Oregon and . . .
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