Residents of Sevenmile Hill have claimed what they call "a major victory" in their bid to oppose construction of a six-mile-long chain of 390-foot wind turbines on the hills above Mosier. Members of the Families for Sevenmile Hill circulated a memo this week from Adam Bless of the Oregon Department of Energy, outlining the results of a Feb. 28 meeting between Oregon Department of Energy and two representatives from UPC. According to Bless: • UPC is considering changes to the project layout. These changes could involve moving some of the turbines from their originally proposed locations, and adding some turbines at new locations instead. • UPC's reason for moving some of the turbine locations is to try and address the public comments.

Tax breaks and cash rebates have done what the most gung-ho green talk has not: ignited a solar power boom in Oregon. Oregon officials expect the amount of solar power in the state to jump more than eightfold this year as businesses, nonprofits and government agencies install rooftop and ground-mounted photovoltaic systems at record rates. The surge is courtesy of the taxpayer, who foots the bill in this effort to go green. ...Skeptics don't like the size of the subsidies, which are expected to reduce the state budget by almost $96 million annually by 2013 -- money that otherwise would be available for schools, health care and other government-funded services. Besides, they note, even such furious development isn't going to make solar energy a significant part of the state's overall power supplies anytime soon. "It's window dressing," said Jeff King, a senior resource analyst with the Northwest Power and Conservation Council who tracks the region's power supplies and finds solar just a blip.

Siemens Power Generation Inc. has been fined more than $10,000 for safety violations in a wind turbine tower collapse that killed one worker and injured another. ...The investigation also found workers were not properly instructed and supervised in safe operations, the technicians each had less than two months' work experience and there was no supervisor on site. The agency says the workers were unaware of the potential for such a failure. Other safety violations included improper company procedures and failure to train employees in emergency rescue procedures.

Eight months after the Oregon Renewable Energy Act was signed into law, Pacific Power - the utility with the most customers in Central Oregon - is already working to meet the state's mandate to deliver 25 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2025. The utility, which provides power to 29 percent of the state, is building wind farms throughout the Northwest and hopes to generate 3,400 megawatts of energy by 2013. ...Representative Chuck Burley, R-Bend, believes customers will end up paying more for their energy, primarily because they will be financing the construction of new, renewable generating facilities. "Overall, the ratepayers will end up picking up the tabs on these things," Burley said. Burley said he supports renewable energy, but he voted against the act because it didn't include caps on rate increases.

Pacific Power is soliciting proposals for small renewable energy projects that can be up and running by the end of 2009. Oregon's renewable energy standard, passed in the 2007 legislative session, requires the state's largest utilities to get 25 percent of their electricity from new renewable energy by 2025, meeting interim benchmarks before then. Pacific Power's request specifies individual projects that produce less than 100 megawatts of electricity to be produced or delivered into its service network, which includes Oregon, Washington, Northern California, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah. ...Utilities that don't meet the renewable energy standard benchmarks will be subject to fines yet to be determined

Developers of the largest wind farm in Oregon expect to begin field work this year and hope to be generating power in 2010. Patricia Pilz, representing Caithness Shepherds Flat of Sacramento, Calif., gave the Willow Creek Valley Economic Development Group a project update Thursday. She gave the 49 in attendance at the Heppner Senior Center an eye-opening view of what the 300-turbine network would involve. Developers have been working on the project in Gilliam and Morrow counties for more than five years, she said.

Congress' failure to include a renewable energy tax credit in the much-touted energy bill passed late last year could chill wind-farm development in the Columbia River Gorge and elsewhere, industry and utility leaders say. For several years, wind developers have taken advantage of a tax credit based on the amount of energy a project generates. That incentive is to expire at the end of this year. "Manufacturers need to plan far beyond that," said Ditlev Engel, chief executive of the world's largest wind turbine supplier, Vestas Wind Systems of Denmark. Engel was in Portland Wednesday to address the Portland Business Alliance. The production tax credit has helped fuel three record-breaking years of wind-farm development. The American Wind Energy Association says 5,244 megawatts of wind energy were installed last year, more than double the previous two years combined.

The wind power hooks into BPA's main transmission grid where it's then delivered to electricity users in the West, primarily in Oregon, Washington and California. ...Wind is a highly variable resource. Those 1,000 megawatts of wind -- capable of powering about 680,000 homes -- weren't a constant force. ...About 20 percent of the time, wind turbines put zero to 20 megawatts of electricity into the grid, and 73 percent of the time they produced 20 to 1,000 megawatts. "You've got major fluctuations," said Doug Johnson, a BPA spokesman.

An energy developer from New York is moving forward with a project to build a gargantuan wind farm along the Columbia River in Gilliam and Morrow counties. If built out as proposed, Shepherd's Flat wind farm would be the largest in the Northwest and more than double the size of any individual wind project under development in Oregon. It would include as many as 303 wind turbines, some stretching 500 feet tall. At peak capacity, the project could generate up to 909 megawatts ...It would include 57 miles of new access roads, two substations, six meteorological towers, 17 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and another 103 miles of collector transmission lines. The application lists about 25 landowners within the site or within 500 feet of its boundaries.

The city of Portland could become part owner of a wind farm east of The Dalles if a deal now in the works with Sherman County and the farmers who live there takes hold. Portland officials are pursuing the idea as a means of offsetting the city government's own energy consumption, which is about 50 megawatts a year. ...Commissioner Dan Saltzman, whose office is leading the negotiations, said while green power generally costs more, the plan ideally would enable the city to meet its renewable energy goal without increasing its energy bill. He expects the investment to pay for itself in about 10 years and that the city ultimately could draw revenue from the project.

By 2025, Oregon must get a quarter of its electricity from renewable resources, as required by a law passed last session by the state Legislature. On the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, the tribes are looking at a variety of ways to tap the reservation's resources to generate green energy, in part to meet the state's expected need. There's a new biomass plant in the permitting stage, studies on the prospects of wind power are under way, and the tribes are even considering geothermal potential on the reservation. ...in Oregon, power utilities that previously had enough energy sources are now looking at buying new renewable power ...

Locked turbine blades and an unplugged circuit board may have been behind the sequence of events that buckled a wind turbine tower and sent a technician plunging to his death. Chadd Mitchell, 35, a technician for turbine manufacturer Siemens Power Generation, died Aug. 25 when a tower at the Klondike III wind farm in Sherman County collapsed. Mitchell was in the generator box, or nacelle, 231 feet from the ground when the incident occurred. ...About 2 p.m. the blades were set flat to the wind "in the full-power position," Winneguth said, which ran counter to safety procedures and proved fatal.

Looking east into Gilliam County and north into Washington, turbines are strung over ridgelines as far as the eye can see. And there are nowhere near enough of them. ...West Coast utilities and independent power producers are locked in a land rush to secure the best wind sites and the power they produce. Coupled with a worldwide shortage of turbines and a falling dollar, the resulting scarcity is driving up the cost of wind power, a burden electricity ratepayers will shoulder.

The wide open spaces and natural terrain and wildlife of Southeastern Washington are fading, and some residents would like the encroaching effects of urbanization toned down, such as a proposed project that would place 35 to 50 turbines on Rattlesnake Mountain. More than 30 people showed up Saturday at the Richland Community Center for a meeting to oppose a proposed windmill farm at the base of the mountain. ...Rick Leaumont, chairman of the Audubon Society's conservation committee, agreed that urgency in protesting the project is necessary because about 238 bird species have been documented in the area, and would be effected by the windmills. "Wildlife needs some kind of solitude, a place that is theirs," Leaumont said. "Any location on the mountain would be a problem."

Wind farms apparently aren't quite as harmless and "green" as promoters like to say. It appears they may present a threat to eagles and hawks, especially along the Columbia River in Oregon and Washington. This should be no great surprise. There is nothing that man can do that does not exact some sort of price on the rest of nature. The trick is finding the lowest price. ...But when it comes to birds, the price gets much steeper. It is feared that with hundreds or even thousands of these windmills close together, they could start exacting a heavy toll on large birds that live in those regions as their native habitat.

A proposed wind farm on Seven Mile Hill near the tiny town of Mosier, Oregon is the centerpiece of the trouble that stems from development near a protected scenic area. The Cascade Wind Project, proposed by UPC Wind Partners, has thus far drawn serious opposition from not only residents of Mosier, but throughout the Gorge and beyond. The farm would be built just outside the Scenic Area boundary, and the 389-foot-high turbines of the 40 towers would be clearly visible from many areas in the Gorge, including Interstate 84 and McCall Point Trail. "This proposal is a slap in the face of the protection rights that everybody in the Gorge has had to live up to for the past twenty years," says Mike Rockwell, a real estate agent who lives in Mosier. "It's simply not a wise location."

By December 2007, more than 1,500 turbines will be churning out electricity in the Columbia River Gorge. Scientists are also concerned that since the turbines are nearing along the ridge of the gorge, canyons and shrub-covered rangeland, the natural habitats of the birds could be at risk. ...Wildlife biologists in Oregon and Washington state say the turbines are taking toll on raptors and other birds and it may limit expansion of clean wind energy.

The rapid expansion of wind energy farms in the Columbia River Gorge's shrub steppes could put hawks, eagles and other raptors on a collision course with fields of giant turbines and their 150-foot blades. ...Nationwide, collisions kill about 2.3 birds of all varieties per turbine per year, studies show. But birders say those numbers are meaningless because the totals make no distinction between abundant and rare species. Golden eagles and ferruginous hawks -- a threatened species in Washington -- already are few in number, said Michael Denny of the Blue Mountain Audubon Society, and even a few fatalities could prove devastating. "We'll have certain species in sharp local decline," Denny said.

Portland-based wind developer PPM Energy will give Columbia Gorge Community College $150,000 to help develop a training program for wind-energy technicians, the first of its kind on the West Coast. The company will spread the cash over three years and earmark it for faculty support. "There's definitely a shortage of skilled technicians," said Jan Johnson...