So will his plan work? Energy analysts say parts of it seem plausible, other parts don't and the timetable is probably unrealistic. It also would substitute one expensive fossil fuel for another. ...Hundreds of thousands of windmills would need to be installed throughout the country's plains, at a price that Pickens estimates between $750 billion and $1 trillion. New transmission lines - worth $64 billion to $128 billion - would be needed to carry all that power to cities. The price alone is daunting, although Pickens notes the money would stay in the United States rather than flow to overseas oil producers.

A 19-megawatt, nine-turbine wind-energy facility is up and running, selling electricity to PacifiCorp and representing the first utility-scale wind project in the state's history. "I'm sure others will catch up and pass it, because it's not a big project by wind-energy standards, but it is the biggest in Utah at the moment," said Randolph Mann, vice president of wind development for Edison Mission Group Inc., based in Irvine, Calif. EMG manages the power-generation business and other unregulated subsidiaries of Edison International.

California, whose laws require it to get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010, has its eyes on Oregon's growing wind power industry. "They're certainly trying to grab it everywhere they can," said Lee Beyer, chairman of the Oregon Public Utility Commission. ...California already imports hydropower in the summer; Oregon and Washington take deliveries from California generators in cold winter months. But Oregon and Washington also face clean energy laws and want the energy too.

California is the big dog in the fight, reaching into the Northwest to buy large amounts of wind power from Columbia Gorge projects. Los Angeles Department of Water & Power and San Francisco's Pacific Gas & Electric are among those securing long-term contracts for hundreds of megawatts of wind power in Oregon and Washington. "They're certainly trying to grab it everywhere they can," said Lee Beyer, chairman of the Oregon Public Utility Commission, which regulates the state's large utilities. The motivation behind California's quest? A rigorous law that says renewable energy must account for 20 percent of electricity sales by 2010.

The struggle to support renewable energy while protecting residents’ quality of life continues, as Victorville denied a wind turbine in a residential neighborhood. “It may be safe and permissible, but I don’t think it’s the best location.” Councilman Mike Rothschild said. Resident Jintau Two applied for a conditional use permit to install a 40-foot-tall wind turbine in his backyard, a 2.3-acre lot on Cabrillo Drive off of Seneca Road.

Southern California Edison has signed a contract with an energy company to build a 909-megawatt wind farm in north-central Oregon, which would provide enough electricity for about 600,000 homes, according to Vanessa McGrady, a spokeswoman for the utility. The utility already gets about 16 percent of its energy from renewable sources and has signed contracts that will soon move that number to 20 percent, officials said.

Once considered wasteland, this expanse of sunshine and wind is now a prized battleground between unlikely opponents. For generations, conservationists like Sall's family have guarded the landscape, but 21st Century demands for renewable energy are threatening to crash into the pristine desert, now deemed a gold mine for solar, wind and geothermal farms. Unlike offshore drilling and other oil and gas ventures in which developers and environmentalists are obvious adversaries, renewable energy is increasingly pitting two kinds of green advocates against each other as the nation seeks alternative sources in the face of record oil prices and global warming, both sides say.

Growers and ranchers in the southern reaches of California are posing the latest obstacle to the state's push for green power. Faced with the possibility of losing land to make way for power transmission lines, they have urged state commissioners to avoid their property when deciding the final route of the project linking energy-hungry consumers on the coast with renewable energy operations in the Southern California desert. San Diego Gas & Electric Co. contends that stringing high-voltage lines over agricultural land in San Diego and Imperial counties as part of its $1.5-billion Sunrise Powerlink project is the most secure and economic way to deliver wind, solar and geothermal energy.

Wind power off California's coast is now just a thought among power developers, and there are no concrete plans to erect turbines at sea. But optimism is fueled by NASA and university studies indicating wind over waters off picturesque Cape Mendocino is strong and consistent enough to become one of the nation's best sources of electricity. Offshore wind and wave technologies are promising, but they're untried. They also raise concerns about potential damage to the coast's prized vistas and fish industry.

The Bureau of Land Management is currently processing two dozen applications for wind and solar projects in the eastern Kern desert. Meanwhile, the Kern County Planning Department has received applications for wind and solar as well as a biogas pipeline and sludge-to-energy plant. ...Kern's wind farms now generate 710 megawatts of wind energy, but that's expected to grow by an additional 4,500 megawatts in the next decade due to the ongoing construction of Southern California Edison's Tehachapi Transmission line project.

Officials with the utility, which serves 4 million residents, project it will have to pay $700 million a year in fees for burning coal under the cap-and-trade system being considered. That will divert money it now spends on expanding energy efficiency and renewable energy programs, said David Nahai, the DWP's general manager. ...Southern California Democrats, who are some of the most outspoken advocates for reducing greenhouse gases, are supporting their coal-dependent utility. They say Los Angeles can wean itself off coal faster if the city-run utility doesn't have to pay a price to pollute. Instead, they say it should be allowed to spend its money on programs that curb emissions, such as meeting energy efficiency and renewable energy goals.

The city is opposing a green power initiative on November's ballot that would mandate that a set percentage of a utility's power be generated with renewable power. Phyllis Currie, the head of Pasadena Water and Power, estimates that the initiative, called Proposition 7, could raise water and power rates in the city by 35 percent to 40 percent. "It would mean we could be mandated to bring on renewable resources much faster than we need them, have the transmission capacity for them, or can afford to pay for them," Currie said at last week's City Council meeting.

By the end of 2010, the state's large, investor-owned utilities are supposed to ensure that 20 percent of the power they sell comes from such renewable sources as the sun and wind. Utilities such as Pacific Gas and Electric Co. have been frantically signing contracts with wind farm and solar power plant developers to meet that deadline. But the report, the California Public Utilities Commission's latest quarterly update on the state's renewable power efforts, designed to fight global warming, found that the utilities probably won't reach 20 percent until 2012 or 2013. Most of the new wind farms and solar power plants they need have not yet been built.

A massive, 7,500-page draft environmental study released in January concluded that the route preferred by SDG&E through Anza-Borrego was among the least preferable environmentally. Of the top seven alternatives, the study ranked five others higher, including a "southern route" for the transmission line along Interstate 8. SDG&E officials argued that the alternate southern route proposed in the environmental study was not feasible because it required crossing tribal lands owned by the Campo and La Posta Indians. ...But top SDG&E officials contended that any southern route would require crossing tribal land when they met with top advisers to the PUC

Wind power's intermittency as an energy resource but minimal contributions toward peak-capacity needs are further evidenced in operational data from three Washington and Montana wind farms. Monthly and even daily energy production vary substantially. Officials from NorthWestern Energy and Puget Sound Energy recently shared these and other wind-power experiences, including reserve requirements (challenging) and wind forecasting (improving). These tales come from the 135 MW-capacity Judith Gap wind farm in central Montana, whose entire output NorthWestern buys from developer Invenergy Wind, and PSE's 150 MW-capacity Hopkins Ridge and 229 MW-capacity Wild Horse wind projects in southeastern and central Washington, respectively. ..."The relationship between load and wind output is almost zero," the former council member told the current council. "That's a real issue for us. We continue to learn almost every day some things about wind operations on our system."

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.

Kern County supervisors Tuesday blessed a disputed wind park project proposed on 5,820 acres 15 miles west of Rosamond. The project would produce 300 megawatts of power, enough to light at least 90,000 homes, county planners said. Dispute over the project centered on a military testing facility nearby. Military contractor Northrop Grumman Co. had said the radar clutter from energy company enXco's plans would kill operations at its Tejon Test Facility, where work on the B2 bomber is under way.

The Kern County Board of Supervisors is set to consider plans for a 5,800-acre wind farm designed to provide electricity to 90,000 homes. Officials with the PdV Wind Energy Project say that between 100 and 300 turbines would generate electricity to be supplied to Southern California Edison.

Several thousand acres of desert scrub land west of Rosamond may eventually be dotted with massive wind turbines if Kern County Supervisors support the project Tuesday afternoon. The PdV Wind Energy Project, proposed by enXco, would use 5,820 acres to generate electricity for Southern California Edison. ...Between 100 to 300 turbines would be placed, and construction would be phased.