San Diego Gas & Electric Co. said it must build a $1.9 billion, 123-mile transmission line to harness solar, wind and underground heat from a distant desert. Critics question if the high-voltage power line will deliver on its promise of providing renewable power from California's Imperial Valley to the nation's eighth-largest city. They say it will blight the mountain landscape with 150-foot towers, and they emphasize that ratepayers will pick up the tab. Those views will clash Thursday when the California Public Utilities Commission meets in San Francisco to consider approving the power line.

The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday will consider an appeal of the Lompoc Wind Energy Project, a proposed wind farm of up to 65 wind turbine generators. ...Opponents, however, have raised issues about the effects of the nearly 400-foot tall turbines on views and quality of life in the area.

A Spanish-owned corporation wants to build a new wind farm in the East County with more than 100 wind turbines. Executives rolled into Boulevard recently to pitch their plan, and reaction was not too friendly. Executives from the Iberdrola Energy Company showed up with a slick Power Point presentation, colorful graphics and a few dozen chocolate bars - dark chocolate with a logo on the wrapper. All this to pitch a new wind farm project to the Boulevard Community Planning Group.

Electricity generated by a massive "wind farm" of giant windmills near Tehachapi will be carried through transmission lines to Southern California. ...But not everyone sees the rosy side of Edison's "green" project.

Lincoln County Commissioners, during their regular meeting November 10, said they were not opposed to the development of wind-generated power in the County, but would rather seek different locations than the ones being proposed. Mission Edison Group, a subsidiary of Southern California Edison, had approached the County about building wind generators on Mt. Wilson and Table Mountain, both a little north of Pioche. County Commissioners have said they do not think those locations are the best places for such large generators.

Whether San Diego Gas & Electric Co. should build a massive power line into the Imperial Valley goes to the heart of a debate that's gripping California and the country as it works to wean itself from fossil fuels. Is it better to rely on huge solar, wind and geothermal power plants far away or generate that power close to where it is needed?

If California expands its renewable power generation to be a third of electricity delivered in the state by 2020, it may cost $60 billion, the state's utility regulator said in a report issued on Thursday. It is more costly to make electricity with renewable power -- solar, wind, geothermal and other sources that emit no or low amounts of global-warming greenhouse gases -- than with natural gas, nuclear and coal power plants. ...On Tuesday, California voters overwhelmingly -- 65 percent of the vote -- rejected a statewide ballot measure that would have required 50 percent of power to be generated from renewables by 2025.

If state regulators follow through with an administrative law judge's recommendation to reject the Sunrise Powerlink, San Diego Gas & Electric Co. still has other options to get the transmission line it seeks. The California Public Utilities Commission decision may be appealed to the courts, or SDG&E could ask the federal government to override state regulators and authorize the big line. A 2005 law allows utilities and other power-line builders to go to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission if they want to build a line rejected by state authorities in areas where federal officials believe there isn't enough electric transmission.

On a day of big decisions around the country - election day - the Shasta County Board of Supervisors will be weighing approval of a 6 1/2-mile long string of wind turbines atop mountains overlooking Burney. While the Shasta County Planning Commission approved the 100-megawatt Hatchet Ridge Wind Project with a 5-0 vote on Oct. 3, a pair of appeals the following week now has the supervisors reviewing the plans. The appeal hearing is set for 1:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Two appeals have been filed against the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission's approval of the Lompoc Wind Energy project, according to county staff. Residents who live near the proposed project, George and Cheryl Bedford, and the California Department of Fish and Game appealed the Sept. 30 decision.

ACCIONA wants to build up to 65 wind turbines near Vandenberg Air Force Base. Supporters of the project said it would be an historic move to bring new forms of energy to the Central Coast. ...But opponents are not sold. The landscape around the proposed area is mostly rural agricultural land. Some want it to stay that way. "We bought here because of that beautiful view that we see," said homeowner Jane Fasold, who opposes the project. Among other concerns: birds and bats killed because of these windmills. The cattle ranch owned by Jennifer Cruz's parents sits right where the turbines would be built. Her neighbors are worried about noise and a drop in property value.

A $400 million renewable energy project could begin construction next month and would power roughly a quarter-million Southern California homes. The plan has received no criticism during a public-input phase that ends Oct. 6. An open house Thursday in Milford introduced Beaver County residents to the plan that would put 159 wind turbines - each 262 feet tall - across 40-square miles on public and private land located 10 miles northeast of town.

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.

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.

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.

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."