Western Wind Energy Corporation has reviewed the wind energy marketplace across the United States and has determined to seek new wind energy development opportunities in California. The strategy is focused at 30 sites totaling over 1,200 Megawatts.

A massive wind power facility proposed for the Tehachapi area, if approved by state regulators, would become the largest project of its kind in the nation. The $3 billion Alta Wind Energy Center would involve installing as many as 750 wind turbines over a 50-square-mile area east and south of Tehachapi. It would generate as much as 1,500 megawatts — more than twice the power of the largest existing wind energy facility in the United States. It also would more than double the wind energy produced in the Tehachapi 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.

Up to 49 wind turbines could line 6½ miles of ridgeline near Burney -- and might be visible from parts of downtown Redding. If approved, the $180 million Hatchet Ridge Wind Project would harness up to 125 megawatts of electricity at the site of the 1992 Fountain Fire, seven miles west of Burney and north of Highway 299. The turbines could reach 500 feet tall.

The United States is expected to be home to an anticipated 49,000 MW of installed wind-power capacity by 2015, making it the world's largest wind-power producer, according to a recent report. Developers are expected to invest more than $65 billion between 2007 and 2015 in wind-power facilities, researchers say.

Oakland, Calif. – The Alameda County Planning Department is recommending that long-time wind industry paid consultant and advocate WEST, Inc. serve as the so-called “neutral” scientific monitor for avian deaths caused by the Altamont Pass wind turbines, despite a clear and continuing financial conflict of interest.

Alameda County supervisors approved a one-year monitoring system that would study the impacts of the Altamont Pass windmills on scores of birds, including golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, burrowing owls and other protected species. The $1.4 million price tag for the deal caused concern among the supervisors, who are afraid the cost of the study has spiraled out of control, but saying the study was necessary, they approved it unanimously Tuesday.

OAKLAND Calif. – A blue-ribbon Scientific Review Committee (SRC) and an Avian Monitoring Team appointed by Alameda County to study bird fatalities at Altamont Pass has begun a groundbreaking monitoring program aimed at finding solutions for reducing the high number of birds of prey killed at some wind turbines. This monitoring effort is intended to detect trends in bird mortality at Altamont Pass and evaluate the effectiveness of mitigation measures implemented to reduce avian mortality. The goal is to reduce deaths of target raptor species by 45 percent.

I am a volunteer at the Lindsay Wildlife Museum hospital (in Walnut Creek, Calif.). In the last two weeks we have had to euthanize three golden eagles and many other birds of prey that have fallen victim to the (Altamont) windmills. Too often the windmills chop them up so bad it is impossible to save them.

A bill to promote geothermal energy development in California was unanimously approved in both houses of the state’s legislature and signed into law Tuesday.

One controversial power line project through the north state has been halted, but state agencies, municipal utilities and power companies are studying other potential new north state lines. Examining how to connect the state to developing renewable power, the Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative (RETI) recently released a report that shows a potential new power transmission line running from the Oregon border through Shasta, Siskiyou and Tehama counties and south to Tracy.

The Anschutz Corporation, through an affiliate Transwest Express LLC, has acquired the rights to develop a proposed $3 billion, 900-mile, 3,000 megawatt high-voltage transmission line to bring electricity from wind farms in southern Wyoming to growing markets of southern California, Las Vegas and Phoenix. ...Another Anschutz affiliate, Power Company of Wyoming, LCC, already has started work developing a 2,000 megawatt wind farm project in Carbon County Wyoming.

A Lompoc couple's attempt to impede an alternative energy project has been denied by the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. The board unanimously denied an appeal Sept. 22 that took issue with temporary meteorological towers that are part of a renewable wind-energy project southwest of Lompoc.

The environmental impact report (EIR) for a proposed 80-turbine wind farm near Mojave is adequate, an appeals court has ruled, clearing the way for construction to begin. In approving the EIR, the 5th District Court of Appeal in Fresno rejected the arguments of the Kerncrest and Los Angeles branches of the Audubon Society. The court also ordered the Audubon society to pay legal bills incurred by the Los Angeles City Department of Water and Power (LADWP).

WASHINGTON — Southern California and the urban centers from Northern Virginia to New York face the most critical power grid problems, but such remote areas as Montana and the Dakotas may need new transmission lines in the near future, an Energy Department report warns.

Despite a bankruptcy declaration filed by its financier, the Hatchet Ridge Wind Project will continue with plans to set 43 windmills in eastern Shasta County, representatives of the business said. Nevertheless, opponents of the turbine project, like Bob Nelson of Save Burney's Skyline, said they found hope in the news of Australian-based Babcock & Brown's financial troubles.

The massive 1,500 megawatt wind power deal announced Thursday by utility Southern California Edison (EIX) and a subsidiary of Australian company Allco Finance will crank up California’s wind energy capacity by 65 percent. That will go a long way in helping the state meet a mandatory target of generating 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010. But renewable energy projects like the huge wind farms to be built in SoCal’s Tehachapi region face a big hurdle: insufficient or non-existent transmission lines to connect the windy and sunny parts of California to the power grid. Yesterday, as the Tehachapi project was being announced, the California Energy Commission released a report warning that, “the lack of transmission infrastructure to access remote renewable resources is the most critical barrier to meeting California’s 20 percent target by 2010.”

Alameda County supervisors were unimpressed with a proposed monitoring system that would study the impacts of the Altamont Pass windmills on scores of birds, including golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, burrowing owls and other protected species. Saying costs for the program appeared to be increasing and that it probably would not sufficiently monitor bird deaths, supervisors directed county staff to find a more thorough system — and stay under the board’s imposed $2 million cost cap.