One of the decisions faced by state officials as they consider the revised Desert Claim Wind Power Project is whether to overrule Kittitas County government's April 2005 rejection of an older version of the wind farm planned for eight miles north of Ellensburg. One could say the Desert Claim project, the state and the county have a "history" in regard to the project.

Representatives from enXco hope their reconfigured Desert Claim Wind Farm, planned for 5,200 acres about 8 miles northwest of Ellensburg will get the go-ahead from the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC). Desert Claim Project Director David Steeb said enXco would submit its revised application for the $330 million, 95-turbine wind farm to EFSEC on Friday.

Renewable energy has muscled its way onto the 2009 Legislature's agenda. As of Wednesday, lawmakers had introduced 16 bills to amend Initiative 937, the voter-approved 2006 measure that requires utilities to ramp up their purchase of solar, wind and geothermal energy beginning in 2012. The reason for the intense interest: This is the first session since its passage that the law can be amended by a simple majority vote.

A Bingen-based company that hopes to build a 70-megawatt wind farm on a backcountry ridge near Underwood has asked the state to explore the expansion of the project north onto 2,560 acres of state trust land. The Saddleback Wind Project would rise on logged-over industrial lands behind Underwood Mountain, just outside the north boundary of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area.

Local residents this year won't see wind farm towers going into the sky 12 miles northwest of Ellensburg, although site preparation work on the ground for the Kittitas Valley Wind Power Project may start this fall. ...Horizon also is seeking from Kittitas County right-of-way use for power lines from the wind farm.

Jewell's idea on establishing a wind-power royalty payment program, discussed in a separate meeting on Jan. 5, is on hold pending more research. The concept was a possible fee on electricity produced by wind farms in the county.

A Native American tribe in northeastern Washington is partnering with a California company to explore the potential for wind energy there. Clipper Windpower of Carpinteria, Calif, placed three wind gauges on the Confederated Tribes of the Colville reservation in July. Peter Stricker, a Clipper vice president, said Thursday that wind testing would continue until about midyear.

Kittitas County commissioners approved an agreement on Tuesday with a wind energy company that has the firm paying Kittitas County for the staff work required to deal with the development of its wind farm. Invenergy Wind North America LLC, through its subsidiary Vantage Wind Energy LLC, will pay the county $110,000 for handling county requirements for the planned 69-turbine wind farm proposed.

Avista Corp. will delay building a wind farm south of Reardan by at least two years, citing the high cost of the wind turbines. "This stuff is really expensive," said Hugh Imhof, a spokesman for the Spokane-based utility. "Why build a $125 million wind farm if we don't need it for another two years?"

Longview realtor Bill Hallanger has been pressing the committee to draft a policy so he can put up an $8,000 windmill he bought from an Arizona company earlier this year. ...County officials say they must review proposals like Hallanger's to protect neighbors from noise and other impacts.

The unanimous decision by the state's highest court that upheld the governor's approval of the Kittitas Valley Wind Power Project has stirred both disappointment and jubilation, depending on how one views the role of state and local government. Those opposed to the site of the 65-turbine wind farm 12 miles north of Ellensburg say the decision bodes ill for local governments.

Wind power advocates won a convincing battle in the Washington Supreme Court, which ruled Thursday that local county commissioners can't block the way for wind power turbine farms. In a unanimous verdict (one justice didn't participate), the court ruled that Kittitas County commissioners couldn't stop the construction of a wind power farm on Highway 97 about halfway between Cle Elum and Ellensburg.

The state Supreme Court has upheld Gov. Chris Gregoire's approval of a wind farm in Kittitas County, despite the objections of local officials.

Kittitas County commissioners approved on Tuesday the expansion of the project area of the Wild Horse Wind Power Project to accommodate the addition of 22 turbines. The 8,600-acre, 127-turbine project east of Ellensburg is owned and operated by Bellevue-based Puget Sound Energy, which has plans to add the turbines to the current project area and to a newly purchased area of about 1,260 acres on the north side of the existing project. ... The new acreage includes about 960 acres purchased by PSE and lands leased from the state Department of Natural Resources and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The Grays Harbor PUD last night authorized an estimated $77 million investment in wind power as it looks for a way to satisfy a citizens initiative requiring utilities to use a certain portion of renewable energy. ...The utility district's commissioners unanimously approved increasing their share of the proposed Radar Ridge wind project from 5 to 10 percent to 64 percent.

Landowners could erect 100-foot-tall wind energy towers on their property, and their neighbors wouldn't be notified or get a chance to comment, under new rules the County Council is considering. The draft law aims to make it easier for people to take advantage of wind turbines, an environmentally friendly and renewable form of electricity, to help power their homes. "It's a great thing if people can produce their own clean energy," said County Council member Barbara Brenner, who, along with council member Carl Weimer, pushed for rules allowing residential wind energy systems. "My biggest concern is if we make it too difficult or cumbersome to get through the process, probably a lot of people who would have done it won't."

Four months ago, Longview Realtor Bill Hallanger bought an $8,000 windmill from an Arizona company and set out to put it up on the nearly 8 acres he owns on Nevada Drive. Hallanger figured the project would be a fun experiment. He'd learn about renewable energy and maybe shave a little money off his electric bill. But the project has taken on a more urgent purpose. Despite looming worries about energy prices and supply shortages, the technology isn't yet covered by the county's zoning laws, and that has stalled Hallanger's effort.

Picture 400 super-size windmills spinning in a steady, stiff ocean breeze just beyond the horizon off the Washington coast, generating enough electricity to supply the needs of Seattle and Tacoma. Now picture thousands of similar windmills off California, New England, the mid-Atlantic, the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. Even as Congress is embroiled in a sharp debate over whether to allow increased offshore oil and gas drilling, others are seriously working to develop a green source of energy along the outer continental shelf.

With Washington's biggest utility about to be bought by foreigners, public power advocates in four counties are hoping to switch their portions of the grid to local control. Voters will decide in November.

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."