Tierra Energy LLC announced today that it has secured a contract to build a $55 million wind farm that will supply a Wyoming power company with renewable energy. Austin-based Tierra Energy's subsidiary, Happy Jack Windpower, will provide Cheyenne Light Fuel & Power with wind-generated energy over a 20-year period. Cheyenne Light Fuel & Power is a subsidiary of Rapid City, S.D.-based Black Hills Corp. (NYSE:BKH).

Transmitting electricity over hundreds of miles to market constrains wind energy development, speakers told 600 participants at a conference at the University of Wyoming last week. So do local, state and federal regulation; and taxation issues, they said. But Laura Ladd, energy economics advisor to Gov. Dave Freudenthal, noted a major omission to that list. "Nowhere in here did we hear of economics as a constraint," Ladd said.

The symposium will also create perspectives for the legislative branches to drum up new laws, along with revenues for Wyoming. In turn the trade-off will be right-of-way easements and more access to state and federal land. Wyoming Wind Corridors will produce the energy, and like all that is produced here, that energy will be sent out on the National Electrical Grid system. Each company online will receive a cut of the Wyoming wind energy pie. Therefore once again Wyoming residents will hold out the coffers' bags, getting the least for the best Wyoming has to offer.

A quiet land rush is under way among the buttes of southeastern Wyoming, and it is changing the local rancher culture. The whipping winds cursed by descendants of the original homesteaders now have real value for out-of-state developers who dream of wind farms or of selling the rights to bigger companies. But as developers descend upon the area, drawing comparisons to the oil patch "land men" in the movie "There Will Be Blood," the ranchers of Albany, Converse and Platte Counties are rewriting the old script.

Wyoming needs a statewide strategy. So far in Wyoming, companies have proposed and developed "wind projects" by leasing private land and/or using company-owned land to erect towers, he said. While these wind farms are generating electricity, they're also generating conflicts about the proximity of towers -- and transmission lines -- to landowners, and a seeming helter-skelter approach to energy development, Meyer said.

"Wyoming is not only a recipient for proposals for transmission, we're also (electricity) generators," Lahti said. And wind turbines, which can reach 400 feet, will dominate the views in parts of Wyoming unless state and federal governments, historical preservation organizations, tribes and industry avoid cluttering the landscape before they build, he said.

About 200 concerned citizens flocked to Douglas May 7 for the first meeting of the Northern Laramie Range Alliance, an organization of landowners and citizens bent on stopping the development of wind turbines and the construction of a segment of Rocky Mountain Power's proposed Gateway West Transmission Line in the northern Laramie Mountains. "The main objective of the (Northern Laramie Range Alliance) is that we want to successfully oppose both of these things," Kenneth Lay, one of the alliance's founding members, explained.

Power Company of Wyoming, an affiliate of Denver-based Anschutz Corp., wants to build 1,000 wind turbines ...The influx of wind developers has raised hopes for jobs and economic development, but has also prompted concerns about erecting hundreds of 230-foot-tall turbines on largely undeveloped land. Locals and land managers, many of them veterans of the decade-long gas boom that brought a frenzy of development to Wyoming, point to the wind boom's potential downsides for wildlife, landscape vistas and local infrastructure.

The Anschutz Corporation, through an affiliate Transwest Express LLC, has acquired the rights to develop a proposed $3 billion, 900-mile, 3,000 megawatt high-voltage transmission line to bring electricity from wind farms in southern Wyoming to growing markets of southern California, Las Vegas and Phoenix. ...Another Anschutz affiliate, Power Company of Wyoming, LCC, already has started work developing a 2,000 megawatt wind farm project in Carbon County Wyoming.

The Power Company of Wyoming is moving forward with plans to build a 1,000-turbine wind farm that overlaps with areas identified by the state as critical sage grouse habitat, the company's president said. More than half of the company's Chokecherry and Sierra Madre project is proposed for land identified by the state as "core population area" in Carbon County.

The Laramie-based Biodiversity Conservation Alliance released a 50-plus page study on Friday, offering recommendations for places in the state the group deems most suitable for wind power development. The report also outlines locations that should be avoided, and the places where the group says developers must tread carefully, for environmental reasons.

Wyomingites should be very careful before jumping on the renewable energy bandwagon. There is no doubt that wind and solar will play some role in our future energy requirements. We need to take a methodical and well-thought out approach to protect the wide open spaces that we all enjoy here in our state.

And turbines are still something of a novelty for most of us, so the "not in my backyard" mentality hasn't yet set in when it comes to wind farms. In fact, as we reported in the Energy Journal, groups of ranchers in eastern Wyoming -- seeing an opportunity to make some money without significantly disrupting their ag operations -- have banded together to market their properties to wind energy developers. That, of course, could change. As turbines begin to spring up in more sensitive, pristine spots, or closer to residential areas, the novelty could wear off quickly.

In an effort to slow the winds of change, the Converse County Planning and Zoning Commission voted Oct. 20 to recommend that the county commissioners consider a 90-day county-wide "freeze" on all large scale industrial development. "From my personal perspective, this says that we want to do business, but we want to do business in a very logical and orderly fashion," said P&Z member David Pellatz. "It's a very different message in my mind. We're not talking bans. We're not talking never can do it."

New Interior Secretary Ken Salazar went overboard when he said Monday that windmills off the East Coast could generate enough electricity to replace most, if not all, of the coal-fired power plants in the country. ...it's impractical to think that the coal-fired power industry -- which supplies about half of the nation's electricity -- could be displaced by wind turbines.

The $3 billion, 900-mile-long, high-voltage line would provide for 3,000 megawatts of wind energy generation in Wyoming for delivery to emerging renewable energy markets in the Desert Southwest, according to Anschutz affiliate TransWest Express LLC. The announcement comes just weeks after another affiliate of Anschutz, Power Company of Wyoming LLC, filed notice to the Bureau of Land Management of its intention to install some 2,000 megawatts of wind generation in Carbon County. The permitting process for both projects could exceed two years.

In the high-stakes game of preserving sage grouse, biologists say they're still figuring out how the birds will react to the influx of wind turbines rising up from the wide-open sagebrush plains where the birds evolved. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 15 months ago commenced a review of whether sage grouse should be protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Pauley's preliminary survey of experts identified four primary 'drivers' that could affect future wildlife populations. They are: expanding rural subdivisions, energy development, invasive nonnative species and climate change. ...Much of the meeting, which wrapped up Friday, highlighted ongoing research efforts to understand the potential impacts of energy development -- from fossil fuels to wind farms -- on sage grouse, songbirds, elk, mule deer and other species across the state.

The state board of Land Commissioners on Friday voted to withdraw from wind energy development about 1 million acres of state land within the core sage grouse population areas. The board action will not affect wind leases issued earlier within the core areas, said Lynne Boomgaarden, director of the Office of State Lands and Investments. The state office has received 32 special-use leasing applications for wind energy development, including 18 within an identified core sage grouse population area, she said.

The commissioners tabled the important vote on the county's first substantial wind energy project after more than four hours of public discussions at Rock Springs City Hall during the Tuesday night meeting. Tasco Engineering Inc. of Lehi, Utah, is seeking a conditional use permit to expand its proposed White Mountain Wind Farm. ...Commissioners said they wanted to be "very, very careful" and review all of the information presented during the formal public hearing before making a decision.