Green Mountain Power and Vermont Electric Cooperative are jointly exploring the construction of a wind power facility called Kingdom Community Wind on Lowell Mountain. ...Lowell Mountain's ridge lines, which rise above farm land west and south of Jay Peak, is within the co-operative's service area. VEC has been talking with Wileman about investing in a wind project on Lowell Mountain for at least several months.

A company working to install a wind-power project on Grandpa's Knob in Castleton is closing its Rutland office. ...In October, the Connecticut company laid off workers in New York and stopped work at two wind farms in that state in conection with the failure of Lehman Brothers, one of its chief backers.

Replacing the energy supplied by Vermont Yankee with 100 percent renewable energy sources could cost Vermont more than $1.2 billion ..."This portfolio of renewable resources would cost approximately $73 per megawatt hour (MWh) to develop and operate and would be more expensive than (building a) new fossil fuel generation plant," stated Scott M. Albert, a principal of GDS Associates and the region manager of the firm's Northeast office, in Manchester, N.H.

The Select Board decided, on a 3-1 vote, to take no position Tuesday on a small-scale, temporary wind research project being proposed for Little Equinox. The project, which is before the state's Public Service Board, would construct an 80-foot residential wind turbine on the mountain for two years for testing purposes.

After more than an hour of discussion at Tuesday's meeting, the Select Board voted to take no position on a proposal to extend by two years the life of a wind measurement tower on Little Equinox. ...Select Board member Michael Kilburn moved that the Select Board take no position because during a vote taken on Town Meeting Day in 2006, the board was directed to oppose a proposal from Endless Energy to build five 390-foot high wind turbines to produce electricity commercially.

Bears and foreign conglomerates were among some the concerns citizens from in and around Readsboro brought to Green Mountain National Forest officials Wednesday night. ...The open house for receiving public input on the Deerfield Wind Project's Environmental Impact Statement was held at the Readsboro Central School's gym. National Forest officials had released a draft if the statement for public review and comment.

The proposed Deerfield Wind project, an expansion of the state's only existing wind energy facility in Searsburg, could have a big effect on the bear population in the area. But exactly how big is a matter of dispute, with the U.S. Forest Service hedging its bets until the Vermont Public Service Board makes a decision on whether construction of the 17-turbine project would be in the "public good." The state technical hearings on the project, postponed from September, are due to start in early December. ...Forrest Hammond, a wildlife biologist and bear expert for the state of Vermont, said the bear habitat on the western ridge was so important to the regional bear population that the agency had gone on record against the western part of the project.

A Georgia family is preparing to seek state approval for three 400-foot wind turbines atop Georgia Mountain, the first commercial wind project to be proposed for Chittenden County. ...If all goes as planned, Georgia Mountain Community Wind will file an application with the state Public Service Board by Jan. 1. If the project wins approval, the turbines would be installed in 2010. The Harrisons' proposal differs from most of the dozen other wind projects in the Vermont pipeline.

Two public meetings on the proposed Deerfield Wind Project have been scheduled in November, according to Robert Bayer of the U.S. Forest Service. The first will be held on Nov. 5 at the Readsboro Elementary School and the second will be held on Nov. 6 in the Franklin Conference Center at the Howe Center. Both are from 6 to 8 p.m. Bayer said the sessions are part of the Forest Service's application process, which is in progress for Deerfield Wind, LLC, a limited liability company created by Iberdrola Renewable.

Chairman Ivan Beattie said he would have been inclined to support the project, as recommended by the Planning Commission, had it not been for a decision made at town meeting in 2006 that gave the town $150,000 to oppose a much larger wind project on the mountain. The former project, proposed by Endless Energy, would have put five 390-foot turbines on the mountain and generated 30 million killowatt-hours a year. Beattie called the two projects "different animals," but he wanted to err on the side of caution. "The integrity of a town meeting vote," he said, "is one of the most important elements of local government."

There are 11 wind turbines at Green Mountain Power's Searsburg wind facility but recently one of them suffered a setback when its nacelle (or wind turbine gearbox) collapsed in high wind conditions. ...On Monday, September 15, a blade on turbine number 10 came in contact with the tower. The chain reaction caused it to buckle and it crashed to the ground, scattering debris several hundred feet from the structure. No individuals were hurt when the nacelle collapsed. However the nacelle leaked 40 gallons of hydraulic oil on the site.

The Planning Commission made a recommendation Monday night that the Select Board review a petition by Endless Energy Corporation (EEC), NRG Systems and Earth Turbines to allow for construction of an 80-foot high, 2.5 kilowatt, wind turbine on top of Little Equinox Mountain. ...But this may not be the last wind turbine activity on the top of Little Equinox in the near future. In an affidavit in support of the petition, Harley Lee, President of Endless Energy Corporation - a wind development company out of Yarmouth, Maine - stated that EEC was still hoping to install wind turbines on Little Equinox Mountain under a proposed innovative community wind structure that would provide local residents, businesses, and other utility customers with cost effective power. An earlier proposal to install five, 410-foot high turbines at the top of Little Equinox stirred enormous local controversy in 2005-06.

A Vermont-based company is planning to construct an 80-foot residential wind tower on Little Equinox this fall. Earth Turbines, a start-up in Williston that develops residential turbines, filed a joint petition Friday with Endless Energy Corp. and NRG Systems to the state's Public Service Board to erect the turbine and continue to use the 100-foot wind measurement tower already on the mountain. ...The town was notified along with adjoining property owners through the permit process. In the application, it states both the turbine and the tower "can be removed by Dec. 31, 2010."

Noble Environmental Power's local representative said the company is not pulling out of Rutland yet. Brad King, project manager of the Connecticut-based company that plans to build a wind farm on Grandpa's Knob, responded Friday to reports that the national financial crisis had caused the company to lay off workers and postpone projects in upstate New York.

Noble Environmental Power is having financial and legal difficulties, but it was unclear Thursday what that will mean for the proposed wind farm at Grandpa's Knob. New York media reported Thursday that Noble had laid off employees and stopped work at two planned wind farms there, linking the development to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, one of the company's chief backers. Meanwhile, the New York Attorney General's Office announced in July it would subpoena Noble and another company developing wind farms in upstate New York as part of an investigation into a variety of allegations against the companies, including bribery and anticompetitive practices.

When one of the 11 wind turbines at the Searsburg wind facility collapsed last month during wind gusts left over from Hurricane Ike, it spilled about 40 gallons of hydraulic oil and crankcase oil. The spill has since been cleaned up, the Agency of Natural Resources said. ...Tedesco said the turbines - blades, nacelle and tower - were designed to withstand winds of 100 miles an hour, and that the blade came off during a gust of wind measuring around 66 miles an hour on Sept. 15, tail winds from Hurricane Ike. He said the winds hadn't even been high enough to trigger one of the turbine's built-in safety features.

A blade on one of the Searsburg wind power turbines flew off during a recent windstorm, hitting the tower the turbine sits on and destroying it. It is unclear when, or even if, the nonfunctioning turbine will be back to full capacity. It was one of 11 that make up the Searsburg project owned by Green Mountain Power. "We had some really strong winds coming through," said GMP spokeswoman Dorothy Schnure. "A blade failed and struck the tower."

The Deerfield Wind Project was handed a setback when two state agencies weighed in on the recent U.S. Forest Service draft Environmental Impact Statement. As a result, the project now faces greater scrutiny in the application process for a certificate of public good. ...On Tuesday, the Deerfield Wind Project suffered another setback, this time with the application process. The Public Service Board granted a request to suspend hearings to allow concerned parties more time to review documents by the project's attorney.

The Vermont Public Service Board was to have opened hearings on Deerfield Wind on Monday, to collect evidence on whether the project should receive permission from the state. Opponents called for the postponement, telling the board that Deerfield Wind had waited until the end of the day Friday to provide them with what they called "an enormous overload of documents" about the project. ...The two-month delay is intended to give all parties an opportunity to review all the documents so they are prepared to fully respond to the information in them.