ShareThisBy DAVID R. BAKER
Monday, November 20, 2006
California's latest source of clean energy started spinning slowly in the wind above the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta last spring.
One hundred white windmills, their blades stretching 122 feet, line the hilltops west of Rio Vista. Installed over the last year, they can generate up to 150 megawatts of electricity, enough to light 112,500 homes.
The Shiloh Wind Power Plant, which was unveiled to reporters and utility executives this week, represents a new generation of technology for wind power. Each of its turbines can generate the same amount of electricity as 15 older windmills, some of which still dot the same grassy hills.
Shiloh also embodies California's mounting efforts to curb global warming.
It is one of the first wind farms to begin operations since California began ordering the state's utilities to use more renewable energy in 2002. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. buys half of Shiloh's electricity. The rest goes to Palo Alto's municipal utility and the Modesto Irrigation District.
"It's exactly the type of project that's going to be helping California meet its global warming pollution-reduction goals," said Audrey Chang, staff scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "This is what clean energy looks like."
The project also demonstrates some of wind power's limitations.
It is spread across 6,800 acres, vastly more than a traditional power plant would require. At roughly $220 million, it also cost more to build than a plant burning natural gas or coal.
But as Shiloh's developers note, its fuel is free, avoiding the wild swings in price that have afflicted natural gas. The turbines pump no carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide or sulfur dioxide into the air. And the land still belongs to property owners who will continue using it to grow hay and graze sheep.
"Over the years with wind power, I think it's gotten to the point where you can have your cake and eat it too," said Barrett Stambler, vice president of PPM Energy. Based in Portland, Ore., the company owns, or has under construction, wind-power projects capable of producing 2,000 megawatts of electricity.
Shiloh's towers overlook the Sacramento River as it flows west from Rio Vista and widens into Suisun Bay. PPM chose the spot because of the strong westerly winds that typically blow in from the bay. For Wednesday's unveiling, however, only a faint breeze moved a few windmills.
Their size dwarfs earlier windmills, some of which have occupied the hills since the late 1980s. Most of the new towers stand 262 feet tall, with three long blades that turn to face the wind. They spin 11 to 20 times per minute, slower than older models. Supporters hope the reduction in speed will make the blades easier for birds to avoid, since the number of birds killed by existing wind farms has become a sore point among many environmentalists.
The towers are designed to last 20 to 30 years. PPM started pursuing the project three years ago, with construction taking about 8 months. The farm started generating power this spring.
Wind farms, of course, aren't new to the Bay Area, as anyone driving through the Altamont Pass can attest. Ty Daul, PPM's regional managing director for the western United States, said the region may have room for more _ if residents and local governments permit them. He estimates the region could get 500 to 1,000 megawatts more. A midsize, natural-gas power plant generates about 500 megawatts.
Daul said the company would like to build more in Bay Area, but any sites would need thorough study to make sure the winds were strong and consistent enough to warrant construction.
"We would want a good year of on-site data before we'd build," he said.
new turbines
Those so called slow moving blades travel at 200 miles per hour at the tips. So it is an optical illusion and a delusion to think that birds can avoid them. Wind power is inefficient since the wind is not blowing when we need the power the most, that is a fact. Also because the turbines are in efficient they always require the back up power of fossil fuel plants so they will not get rid of any. They will only add more industry and blight to the land and the environment. But they will, however, add lots of money to the pockets of the wind industry and duped land owners.
Your argument is idotic and
Your argument is idotic and competley void. The reason they use fossil fule is for a back up supply and the amount is significantly less then a normal generator. Plese if you want the world to super heat just to "fight the man" and destroy the environment fine by me , I fully support California's atempt at trying to shoulder ther burden of global warming.
wind power
Actually,the commenter of 11/17 is 100% correct. Windpower is not productive except to enable utility companies, windmill mfrs' & promoters to pillage the publics' hard-earned dollars from the Tax Coffers through lobbied-for tax credits and subsidies. Just check the California Energy Commission's Gross System Power Report for 2005 to confirm that 13,000 windmills in California desecrating 100,000-plus acres produce almost no power. Check Eric Rosenbloom's "A Problem with Wind" to confirm that 90% of that tiny power product cannot even be used in-country (experience of Denmark, world's largest per capita user of wind "power")! Check Audubon Society letter of 2006 to California Energy Commission to confirm millions of birds at risk not even tallied by slipshod methods used on wind-industry owned properties (almost certainly purposely!); and California Energy Commission 2005 Assessment of Bird Mortality to confirm that they don't even provide enough information to enable a numerical estimate of actual fatalities, as well as Windmill Industry Websites (AWEA and "Clean Power Now") who publicly and brazenly mistate the truth, saying "92 birds a year are killed in Altamont" when actually 1,000's are. Bottom line, respondent of 11/17 has done his homework. Respondent of 11/18 apparently believes everything he reads and sees (slick camera-angled photos of windmills against blue skies and puffy white clouds that don't tell you anything, just a fantasy illusion picture), when so much is planted by very rich special interests, desiring only to "burn baby burn" the public, based on the public's most earnest and legitimate desire for something they full well know windmills can never deliver (power that's abundant renewable clean and could free us from CO2, Fossil Fuels, & air pollution will never come from windmills, because virtually no useable power at all).
We're living in an age of very smooth public relations methods, politicians for sale to the highest campaign contributer. To believe what you read in the newspaper and broadcast media and public relations organs, without doing substantial independent research is to lose by default to deeply-entrenched special interests which accumulate a larger and larger proportion of the public wealth year after year after year, in return for little or no contribution at all, in the confident belief that "campaign contributed" politicians and their public agency appointees, along with disinformation flooded media channels forever insulate the public from ever finding out the truth. We outnumber them by 100's of Millions yet are helpless as long as they can keep us in the dark and feed us ....
"Choose also to remain anonymous, but check it out, take responsibility for your own life, do some independent research, learn how to seek the truth yourself, it's the truth!"