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Another Wind Farm Proposed by Chris Mulick, Herald staff writer Tri-City Herald, May 8, 2001

A Boise company has signed an agreement with the Bonneville Power Administration to build a 50-megawatt wind farm in the Rattlesnake Hills north of Prosser.

That would make it the fourth such facility, and second-largest, to go up in the Mid-Columbia in recent years, and more figure to be on the way. The federal power marketer, which signed a 20-year contract to buy power from the Maiden Wind Farm, wants to add more wind power to its portfolio of electric resources.

A recent request for proposals was greeted by an impressive response: 25 projects that would produce an average of 850 megawatts, enough to serve a city the size of Portland. Potential expansions included in the proposals would increase that total to an average of more than 1,300 megawatts.

Eighteen of those are proposed for sites in Oregon and Washington with many of them lying within the Northeast Oregon/Southeast Washington region, said Sheila Riewer, a public utilities specialist for Bonneville.

Not all will get built. Bonneville plans on developing a short list of projects from that list by the end of the month and begin negotiating contracts.

Northeast Oregon and Southwest Washington already are home to a small project north of Helix, and two others sites are being developed in the area. The 450-turbine Stateline project straddling the Oregon-Washington border near Walla Walla will be the largest in the world, and a smaller farm is being developed by Energy Northwest south of Finley.

By the time the Maiden Wind Farm comes online late next year, the four projects will generate about 150 average megawatts. And it's expected that will just be the start.

"There's still a lot more potential for wind power development," said Tom Osborn, a Walla Walla-based engineer for the BPA.

Washington Winds Inc., whose parent company owns four similar projects farms east of San Francisco, began talking with Bonneville last year about building the Maiden Wind Farm. The project, which is being built on leased farm land, could be expanded to produce as much as 130 average megawatts.

With wholesale electricity prices skyrocketing, wind power has become increasingly popular. Wind farms are environmentally friendly and take little time to permit and build.

They don't kill nearly as many birds as earlier models do, and most importantly, they produce more power at a cheaper cost. Power produced at the Maiden Wind Farm will cost Bonneville less than 4 cents per kilowatt-hour. That beats prices from natural gas-fired plants in today's market.

"We're getting really competitive," said Rick Koebbe, president of Washington Winds.

The Mid-Columbia and its wind-swept terrain has proved to be popular among wind farm developers. Washington Winds also is hoping to build a separate 50-megawatt project in the Horse Heaven Hills.

Mid-Columbia sites also are valuable thanks to the web of transmission lines overhead that serve the federal hydroelectric system. Two cross the Maiden Wind Farm site.

"This site we've identified is one of the best sites, if not the best site in the Northwest," Koebbe said.