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Numbers
Electricity supplied to the Pacific
Northwest
87
million kilowatt-hours
Amount used in Oregon
18
million kilowatt-hours
[The numbers above are estimates
based on imports from California to the Northwest Power Pool area
within the United States in 1997.]
Potential new regional
generation
700
average megawatts
Cost of new
generation
5 to 8 cents per kilowatt-hour
[The numbers above are Office of
Energy estimates as of June 1999.]
Uses
The Vansycle Wind Project in Umatilla
County began operation in December 1998. It has a generating
capacity of 24.9 megawatts. Portland General Electric buys 100
percent of the output. The project, built and owned by FPL Energy,
consists of 38 Vestas turbines.
Nearby is the Stateline
Wind Project. The Oregon portion of the project consists of 127
turbines with a generating capacity of 84 megawatts. The overall
Stateline project includes 273 turbines in Washington. The total
generating capacity of the Oregon and Washington turbines is about
282 megawatts. PacifiCorp buys the output from the Stateline
facility.
The Wyoming Wind Energy Project is a 41.4
megawatt wind project at Foote Creek Rim near Arlington, Wyoming.
PacifiCorp owns 80 percent of the project and the Eugene Water and
Electric Board owns the rest. The Bonneville Power Administration
buys the output from 15 megawatts of the project and sells the
electricity to Salem Electric. The project, consisting of 69
Mitsubishi turbines, was designed and built by SeaWest.
SeaWest owns the Condon Wind Energy
Project in Gilliam County. Phase 1 of the project has a generating
capacity of 24.6 megawatts. SeaWest plans to complete Phase 2 by
June 2002, bringing the total capacity of the project to 49.8
megawatts.
Opportunities
The Office of Energy in cooperation with
Oregon State University (OSU) and the Wind Research Cooperative
(WRC) has begun a three-year project with funding from the National
Renewable Energy Laboratory to monitor wind conditions at two sites
in Oregon. OSU is a major subcontractor for the project, and the WRC
reviewed the candidate sites. The data will assist industry and
local wind energy supporters in accelerating the development of wind
energy projects.
Barriers
The principal barrier is competition from
lower-cost gas-fired generation. The environmental benefits of
generating electricity from wind and other renewable sources are not
given value in the marketplace. Other barriers include zoning,
inadequate information about potential wildlife issues and the cost
of transmission from remote sites to load centers. Data on wind
conditions may not be available for some promising sites, resulting
in a long lead time to assess wind potential. Local environmental
and wildlife concerns may limit development in some
areas.
Trends
Wind power technology has improved
greatly in the last decade. The generating capacity of wind turbines
has increased significantly, and the cost of generating power from
wind has declined.
History
Wind resource assessments began in the
1970s and continue today. Oregon State University has wind data from
152 sites. In 1980, the Wind Task Force of the Alternate Energy
Development Commission found that Oregon had significant wind
resources and promising opportunities to use it. The Oregon
Department of Energy followed up by publishing the Windy Land Owners
Guide and model city and county ordinances for siting wind systems.
The agency was involved in the nation's most extensive research on
local siting regulations for wind projects, in a Coastal Wind Data
Inventory and in wind measuring projects at two coastal parks,
Bullard's Beach and Fort Stevens.
As a result of a federal research program
in the 1980s, small turbines for field testing were installed in
Wasco County and at Cape Blanco. Cape Blanco's high winds and
coastal bench topography attracted several attempts to develop wind
projects with over a million dollars spent on feasibility studies.
Just north at Langlois another wind farm received a permit from the
Energy Facility Siting Council but the project was never
built.
In 1983, the first commercial wind
project in the Pacific Northwest began operation above Whiskey Run
beach along the southern Oregon coast between Charleston and Bandon.
The 1.25-megawatt project consisted of twenty-five 50-kilowatt
turbines. This project was removed 10 years later when energy prices
fell and spare parts became unavailable.
In a project sponsored by eleven
consumer-owned utilities, an experimental 500-kilowatt vertical axis
turbine was installed just north of Newport. At the time it was one
of the largest vertical axis turbines in the world. After several
years of operation, the manufacturer ceased supporting it, and the
turbine was removed.
In response to public interest in
residential systems, the Oregon Department of Energy operated an
anemometer loan program through the Energy Extension Service during
the late 1970s and early 1980s. The instruments were set up for a
year to see if adequate winds were present. In most cases, the
measurements showed inadequate winds to effectively power a
turbine.
Over forty small-scale systems were
installed across the state during the 1980s. They were built by
people responding to marketing by local wind dealers and wanting to
make renewable energy. The Department of Energy approved tax credits
for many of the installations.
After Portland General Electric issued a
request for proposals, wind projects were proposed at Seven Mile
Hill near The Dalles and on Vansycle Ridge north of Pendleton. FPL
Energy constructed the wind project at Vansycle Ridge in 1998 that
is described above.
In 2001, the Energy
Facility Siting Council issued a site certificate to FPL Energy
for construction of the Oregon portion of the Stateline
Wind Project. This project spans the border between Oregon and
Washington. It will have a total generating capacity of about 282
megawatts, of which about 84 megawatts will be generated from
turbines in Umatilla County, Oregon.
Near Condon, Oregon, in Gilliam County,
SeaWest Power building a 49.8-megawatt wind project, consisting of
83 turbines. The Bonneville Power Administration will purchase the
output from this facility.
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