San Diego Gas & Electric Co. says it plans to build a substation in the southeast corner of the county that will allow it to increase its use of wind and solar power.

The substation, to be built near Jacumba, will take electricity from wind projects in the mountains of East County and northern Baja California and put it onto the Southwest Powerlink, a power-transmission line that runs along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The 58-acre substation is part of a $270 million project that will also improve electric service to nearby rural communities, the company said.

"It's going to provide the infrastructure necessary to connect future wind and solar projects to our existing power grid," SDG&E spokeswoman Jennifer Briscoe said.

SDG&E and other utilities are required by the state to get increasing amounts of electricity from sources other than fossil fuels.

The company says it has contracts to get 26 percent of its electricity from such renewable sources in 2012 and plans to get one-third of its power from them by 2020.

The utility said that this project, along with its planned Sunrise Powerlink transmission line and a deal it recently made for 160 megawatts of wind power from the Campo Indian band, are signs of its efforts to increase the use of renewables.

Six wind projects totaling 1.8 gigawatts have asked for approval to provide power to SDG&E through the Southwest Powerlink, according to the California Independent System Operator.

Backcountry activist Donna Tisdale said she's worried that wind projects will change the face of San Diego's high desert for the worse.

SDG&E is using a speculative wind proposal as another political tool to promote the Sunrise Powerlink," Tisdale said.

Wind towers are noisy, ugly and fire hazards, she added.
"We now know a lot more about the dark side of industrial wind," Tisdale said.

Briscoe said such criticism misses the mark.

"(Tisdale) may find them to be ugly, but there are just as many people out there who really like the wind-farm towers," she said.

The project will be paid for by electricity users throughout California. Because SDG&E's regulated revenue is based on how much infrastructure it owns and maintains rather than how much electricity it sells, the project will add to the company's income.