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Wyo’s wind resource – Uncertainty over taxes, lack of transmission lines hamper wind power growth

If you didn’t know it already, no place has wind like Wyoming. Witness the wind energy farms that stretch along Interstate 80 near Arlington and Evanston.

By JEFF GEARINO
Southwest Wyoming bureau

http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2004/10/11/news/wyoming/2b250530818cca6e87256f290021029d.txt

Improved technology and reduced power generation costs have raised interest across the nation in wind energy as an alternative to fossil fuels. Wyoming’s industry already has a leg up on many other states, with nine wind energy projects completed or planned.

"There’s an awful lot of interest in Wyoming, because there’s a great wind resource in the state," said spokeswoman Christine Real de Azua with the American Wind Energy Association. "The wind resource in Wyoming is just excellent, and we think there’s room for plenty more development in the state."

But how many more wind energy projects should be allowed in Wyoming and across the West? And where should they go?

Bureau of Land Management officials have been grappling with the issue for several years, trying to determine the best management approach to facilitating wind energy development — and the best way to mitigate potential impacts from that development.

The agency released a draft environmental document last month for public review that outlines the BLM’s proposal on how to manage wind energy development on public lands in the western United States.

The BLM has scheduled public scoping meetings to obtain comments on the proposal in five western states including Wyoming. Wyoming’s meeting is set for Nov. 12 in Cheyenne.

The BLM hired Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill., to conduct a programmatic environmental impact statement. The document builds on an interim wind energy policy developed as part of the National Energy Policy recommendations.

Management alternatives

The preferred alternative in the document proposes to implement a comprehensive wind energy development program. The policies would be applicable to all wind energy development projects on BLM-administered lands in 11 Western states, excluding Alaska.

The document said the program is expected to minimize some of the delays that now occur for wind energy development projects and reduce costs. In addition, the program would ensure consistency in the management of way right of way applications and grants for wind energy development.

"The proposed … program is likely to result in the greatest amount of wind energy development over the next 20 years, at the lowest potential cost to industry," the document said. "The proposed action is (also) likely to provide the greatest economic benefits to local communities and the region as a whole."

The document also considered a no-action alternative that would subject wind energy development to the conditions of the existing interim 2002 wind energy development policy.

Under a third alternative, the amount of wind energy development would be greatly restricted in comparison to the preferred alternative, according to the document. In terms of facilitating new wind energy development, the alternative would be the least effective, the document said.

U.S. Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., said he would lean more toward that limited option as the BLM considers its management strategy for Wyoming.

"As we consider our whole energy picture, I believe wind energy is a good thing for us to look into in selected areas of the state," Thomas said. "However, we need to do further research into making wind energy more efficient and economically viable … With development of any energy resource, there may be effects on other uses of the land," he said. "We need to make sure there is a balance between our gains in energy development and the potential impacts."

Real de Azua said in a phone interview the American Wind Energy Association favors a "streamlined and efficient process" that will allow projects to move forward in a timely manner.

She lauded Congress’s reinstatement last month of the wind energy production tax credit after a nine-month delay. The measure provides a 1.5 cent-per-kilowatt-hour tax credit for electricity generated with wind turbines.

The delay in extending the credit came following a banner year for the industry, in which it installed a near-record 1,687 megawatts of generating capacity.

"We’ll be seeing a new wave of investments for 2005 because of the extension," Real de Azua said. "It’s not a long-term extension, only running through December 2005, but we’re hoping it at least puts the industry back on track for awhile."

She anticipated about 2,000 megawatts of capacity nationwide will come on-line over the next 12 months.

Wildlife effects

Wyoming Game and Fish Department Deputy Director Bill Wichers said there are wildlife issues and concerns that should be addressed in whatever direction the BLM decides to go with wind energy development.

Those include potential effects of wind turbines on birds, bats and big game use of habitat next to and on wind farms.

"Wind energy is a relatively new, significant energy source out there, and we’re still in the learning process as far as figuring out what the impacts are and how to mitigate those impacts, particularly on how to mitigate impacts from wind generators on wildlife, primarily birds and bats," Wichers said.

He noted during the construction of the Arlington wind energy project at Foote Creek Rim between Laramie and Rawlins in the late 1990s, the department and developer were successfully able to implement several steps to protect birds and wildlife.

The wind farm used tubular towers and buried cables instead of lattice bases and pole-mounted cables, in order to avoid adding new perching places for birds. The large turbine blades were also coated with ultraviolet-reflecting paint to make them more visible to birds.

"They also did things like move the turbines back from the edge of the plateau, which greatly reduced bird (deaths)," Wichers said.

Southwest Wyoming bureau reporter Jeff Gearino can be reached at (307) 875-5359 or [email protected].

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Uncertainty over taxes, lack of transmission lines hamper wind power growth

By JOE KAFKA
Associated Press writer Monday, October 11, 2004

http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2004/10/11/news/wyoming/db1785d888b5016887256f290021000e.txt

PIERRE, S.D. — The wind-swept Great Plains could easily augment the nation’s insatiable hunger for electricity if political and practical roadblocks are removed that prevent large-scale expansion of modern wind farms, industry officials say.

Electricity from wind amounts to less than 1 percent of all the power generated in the United States. But industry officials say that someday, wind energy could generate 10 percent to 20 percent.

Wind should supply at least 5 percent of the nation’s energy by 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The block of states from North Dakota to Texas are among those with the greatest wind energy potential, along with Montana, Wyoming, Minnesota and Iowa.

But two major obstacles impede increased wind energy development: uncertainty over a federal tax credit for wind-produced electricity, and lack of adequate lines to deliver the extra electricity to power-hungry big cities.

The industry tax credit is locked in at 1.8 cents per kilowatt-hour for the first 10 years that wind farms operate. That makes them competitive with the cost of power plants run on natural gas. Congress has reinstated the credit through 2005, but the federal incentive has expired three times since first passed in 1992. Each time, it sent wind-farm planners into a tailspin.

Wind projects totaling more than $2 billion have been on hold since Dec. 31, when the tax credit last lapsed.

Congress should extend the tax credit for at least five years to provide the industry more stability, said Tom Gray, deputy executive director of the American Wind Energy Association.

Even with renewal of the incentive, developing major wind farms on the Great Plains is hampered by inadequate transmission lines, Gray said.

AWEA wants streamlined use of existing lines and construction of beefier lines that would carry Plains-produced wind power to large cities, both east and west. The entire Great Plains transmission system needs to be redesigned and redeveloped, Gray said.

"Transmission is a serious impediment in terms of using wind in a major way," he said.

Breezy rural areas of the Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming could fuel huge wind farms, said Jim Burg of South Dakota, who chairs the Electricity Committee of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.

Great Plains states need to cooperate on increased transmission capacity, he said. It may even take federal involvement to help build major power lines that could feed more electricity from both wind farms and new power plants located near coal fields in Montana and North Dakota to metropolitan areas such as Chicago and Denver, Burg said.

Coal plants produce more than half of the nation’s electricity but are expensive and face rigorous environmental obstacles. Consequently, the power industry in recent years has provided more electricity for demanding customers by constructing many less-costly plants fueled by natural gas.

The ability to quickly turn those plants on and off is a perfect fit for the intermittent electricity supplied by wind farms, Burg said. The huge propellers on wind turbines stop when there’s no wind, so that’s when natural gas can pick up the slack for power companies, he said.

Nice fit for farmers?

Power easily produced by nearly constant prairie winds may help struggling rural economies.

Standing starkly against the broad horizon, 27 huge wind turbines near Highmore, S.D., thrash the air in tempo, turning nature’s kinetic energy into electricity.

The whir of 110-foot propeller blades atop 213-foot turbine towers is the sound of money to LeRoy Ratzlaff, 76, and his wife, Rena, 74. Seven of the giant windmills owned by FPL Energy are on the couple’s farm, and rental payments provide them extra income and boost the fortunes of the county and nearby Highmore, population 850.

Wind turbines fit in nicely with farming, said LeRoy Ratzlaff, who raises cattle and wheat. Cattle can graze right up to the towers, and crops can be grown all around them, he said.

Farmers and ranchers, depending on wind potential in different areas of the country, are typically paid $2,000 to $6,000 a year for each tower they allow on their land.

With only minimal manufacturing and relatively light demand for electricity in the Dakotas, mammoth wind farms are unlikely to be located here unless they find customers elsewhere and have the transmission capacity to carry power across state lines, said Susan Wefald, a member of the North Dakota Public Service Commission.

"Lack of transmission is a major impediment to the large expansion of both wind and lignite (coal) energy sources in the Upper Midwest," she said.

A May report from the Department of Energy to Congress said the question of who pays for transmission expansions will be a major barrier to "large-scale exploitation of the abundant wind and coal resources in the Upper Midwest."

Power lines capable of carrying huge amounts of current can cost up to $500,000 per mile, a South Dakota Public Utilities Commission analyst said.

And the DOE says major expansion of the transmission system is unlikely until the cost question is answered.

Clipper Windpower, a California-based firm, plans to build the nation’s largest wind farm in South Dakota, said James Dehlsen, the firm’s chairman and chief executive officer. The 3,000-megawatt, 1,000-turbine project, which he said will be built in stages as Midwest transmission capacity increases, would produce 10 times the power of the biggest existing wind farm.

"Our aim is to get the first 100 or 200 megawatts off the ground in two or three years," Dehlsen said. "Once that happens, then I think the long-term roll out of it would be something we could afford to do, and it would have certain momentum."

The nation’s largest wind farm now is the FPL Energy Stateline Wind Project on the Washington-Oregon border. It has 454 turbines and a capacity rating of 300 megawatts.

The largest concentration of wind turbines in the nation is on Buffalo Ridge in southwestern Minnesota, harboring about 25 individual wind farms with more than 600 turbines capable of 500 megawatts — enough to serve 150,000 homes.

There’s been renewed interest in wind power in the last decade as turbines have become a more efficient and reliable means of making electricity, Dehlsen said. Clipper has turbines that will work economically in areas with less wind, he said.

FPL Energy, the national leader in wind energy development with 43 wind farms in 15 states, is interested in adding wind farms in the Dakotas, said John DiDonato, director of the firm.

"The wind profile of these states is extremely good, but we have to be focused on the customer, and our customers are limited by the transmission constraints of the area," he said.

Wind power had its last heyday shortly after the energy crisis of the 1970s. But poorly built turbines and falling fuel costs at traditional power plants snuffed interest in wind-produced electricity.

LeRoy Ratzlaff, whose rural neighborhood in Hyde County has been dubbed "the blizzard belt," says the sprawling 10-mile-long wind farm that originates on his land is taking advantage of an abundant natural resource.

"I tell people the wind we’ve got in South Dakota is at least good for something," Ratzlaff said.

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