The first phase of a $500 million wind farm south of Ethridge and 85 miles north of Great Falls is finished and on the electrical grid, with the power bound for California. ...The wind farm connected to the transmission system Wednesday, said Claudia Rapkoch of NorthWestern Energy, which owns the transmission line that will ship the power to market. "Why not produce it in the state of Montana?" Rapkoch said. San Diego Gas and Electric, an investor-owned utility in California serving 1.2 million customers, is buying the electricity.

In the works for three years, a high-voltage transmission line connecting Montana's electric grid to Alberta's through eastern Teton County is on the last leg of a footrace slowed by intense scrutiny from landowners in the proposed right of way and from the regulatory agencies required to vet the project. The final environmental impact statement for the Montana Alberta Tie Ltd. 230-kilovolt power line was published in the Federal Register on Oct. 3. ... The power line would make possible wind energy development totaling 600 megawatts, 300 mw in each direction, from Great Falls to Lethbridge, Alta.

The state Department of Environmental Quality and U.S. Department of Energy on Monday released a summary of a long-awaited final environmental impact statement for the 203-mile Montana Alberta Tie Line, which outlines the preferred alternative and several others. Final decisions on the project by both agencies could follow in a month, regulators said. ..."We basically sat down with the director and went through this segment by segment, trying to pick which would best serve MATL's needs as well as the landowners," Hallsten said. "It's turned out to be a balancing act." The agency says it selected the preferred alternative because it provides the best balance between avoiding impacts to farmers while not making the project too expensive for the developer.

Florida-based FPL Energy, the nation's largest wind farm owner, is prospecting along Montana's wind-swept Rocky Mountain Front as it pursues an aggressive goal nationally of adding 10,000 megawatts of additional wind power to its portfolio. "The short answer is, 'Yes, we are interested,' but it's going to be a long time before we would be in a position to be able to put anything on the ground, if ever," said FPL Energy spokesman Steven Stengel, of Juno Beach, Fla. James Carney, an FPL Energy land specialist based in Bend, Ore., visited the area a month ago, when he met with landowners and elected officials in Teton and Pondera counties to gauge interest and look for available land.

The groundbreaking for a multi-million dollar wind turbine manufacturing facility in Butte planned for this fall is now set for spring 2009. [The] Governor's Office of Economic Development said the project is definitely moving forward, however an overwhelming demand for turbines elsewhere has delayed the project temporarily. "Right now they are opening a brand new plant in Germany. Of course they are not a huge company, as a result of that, their focus is on that,getting that done successfully and being able to take care of three or four things going on.

Montana Alberta Tie Ltd. was granted a permit from the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board on Tuesday to construct the Canadian stretch of a 215-mile electrical transmission line between Great Falls and Lethbridge. The line is expected to spur wind farm construction in northcentral Montana. The EUB permit was the final OK needed for the Alberta portion, which makes up about 40 percent of the entire project, said Bob Curran, an EUB spokesman. Canada's National Energy Board previously approved the plan. "It means they can construct and operate the line now," Curran said.

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."

A single wind farm located in a scenic setting outside this rural Canadian town was featured on a postage stamp three years ago. Today, the cumulative stamp of hundreds of turbines on the views of wide-open farmland and majestic mountains here is an increasingly sticky issue. "How many is too many?" asked Rod Zielinski, a municipal district councilman in Pincher Creek, 250 miles north of Great Falls. Last year, the district unsuccessfully tried to create a wind development-free zone in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Now it's proposing changes to its bylaws to address "cumulative effect." ...Some residents value tax revenue and jobs more than vistas, and vice versa, Zielinski said. Weighing these equally important but sometimes competing values is the contentious issue in regulating the siting of wind plants, he said. "Be prepared for these things [turbines] to be there forever, like the bank downtown," he said.

Spain-based NaturEner, a renewable-energy company that recently entered the North American market, officially broke ground Thursday on the first phase of a 210-megawatt wind farm on the hills between Cut Bank and Shelby. The electricity produced from the $500 million wind farm, which will be the state's largest, is bound for California, company officials said. Construction began in the spring, but Thursday was the official debut of the project for the public. The fanfare brought NaturEner officials to northcentral Montana from the company's international headquarters in Madrid.

Montanans have long dealt in water, mineral and oil rights. But for the past few years, landowners like the Phippses have been leasing their "rights" to the wind. ..."Only about one third of the projects ever make it to market." Hamlen and others cite two key bottlenecks facing wind development in Montana. First, transmission capacity is nearly maxed out. And second, a shortage of turbines continues to plague the industry. In light of the state's current situation, Hamlen cautions landowners against empty promises.

But no matter what legislators might wish, wind energy is not the same as traditional fuel. And while the relative cost of wind can be debated to no end, its biggest inconvenience is well-known: integration. Also known as wind firming or wind-stabilization, integration requires that fuel-based energy kicks in when the wind dies down, allowing for the uninterrupted flow of power to consumers. Integrating the wind thus requires a second power source, officially referred to as the regulating reserve capacity. The primary argument between the TDW and NWE is simple: Who should pay to integrate the wind?

Alberta farmers who hope to halt construction of a major power transmission line proposed between Great Falls and Lethbridge were granted permission Thursday to appeal the $150 million project to the Alberta Court of Appeals. "The only way we're ever going to stop this line is to win an appeal and get the decision overturned," said Scott Stenbeck, an attorney representing 16 farmers who live in the Lethbridge and Warner areas. Marc Clark, president of the line's developer, Montana Alberta Tie Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Toronto-based Tonbridge Power Inc., said the ruling may delay the project, but it won't stop the proposed line.

Butte Local Development Corporation's Jim Smitham says consultants need until mid-July to gather more information. He says the extension is not a sign that the project has stalled. So far preliminary results show growth in the wind energy market by 20%, and Fuhrlander is building more plants in Europe to meet those demands. Smitham adds that's a good sign for the $25-million investors are investing for the Butte plant.

The state's largest wind farm, under construction immediately south of this Hi-Line town, will be finished in five months, officials with the San Francisco-based company said at the site Wednesday. Glacier Wind Project, which will produce 210 megawatts of electricity, is being constructed under the direction of general contractor Mortenson Construction out of Minneapolis. Spain-based NaturEner, whose U.S. headquarters are in San Francisco, is the owner/operator.

A new breed of prospector is scouring Montana's hills, but wind is the resource it seeks. Before these prospectors harvest that gold in the sky, however, they've got to secure the real key to the mother lode - permission from landowners to build towering wind turbines the size of a Boeing 747. Across the state, from Circle in the east to Ennis in the west, the race is on to lock up the best sites by courting landowners and sealing deals for exclusive rights to explore and develop wind power. Hundreds of thousands of acres already are under lease to foreign and U.S. wind developers.

For competitive reasons, wind companies don't disclose what they're paying landowners to lease property for wind farms. Oftentimes, landowners sign confidentiality agreements when leasing their property for such ventures. However, leasing information is public when school trust land is involved. ...Michael Sullivan, property management section supervisor for the Real Estate Management Bureau of the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, said the state is considering leasing an additional 6,820 acres of school trust land to four wind projects.

Wind power, unlike electricity generated by a coal-burning plant or a hydroelectric dam, is intermittent. It comes and goes with the blowing wind. It's not entirely unpredictable, but it cannot be controlled by a switch. Therefore, when wind is added to the mix of electricity on our local grid or power system, the system operator - in much of Montana, NorthWestern Energy - has to be able to call on additional power from a ready, reliable source to keep the system in balance when the wind power abates. Montana utility managers and regulators must determine the true cost of acquiring and managing this additional power if we're going to have more wind on our system and more wind power projects in the state. ...The project developers say they're willing to pay, but only if NorthWestern or someone produces credible data that determine those costs accurately for a given project. Data from Judith Gap, a large wind farm in one location, are not applicable to projects of varying size around the state, they say.

NorthWestern Energy has declined an offer to buy additional power from the Judith Gap wind farm, whose operators have proposed expanding the 135-megawatt project. "We don't think it's in the best interests of our electricity supply portfolio to acquire that (expanded) project at this point in time," said John Hines, director of supply for NorthWestern. NorthWestern sent a letter this week to the project owner, Invenergy, declining its offer, Hines said.

State utility regulators indicated Tuesday they'll support charging small wind-power projects in Montana for the cost of adding their power to NorthWestern Energy's electric system that serves 320,000 Montanans. ...NorthWestern had proposed charging small projects anywhere from 16 percent to 44 percent of their entire income from power production. Developers have argued that the cost of adding their power to the system is minimal or nothing at all, and that the charges proposed by NorthWestern aren't supported by credible data and would kill development of small projects. The charge is for "integration costs," which are what the utility pays for additional power it says it needs to keep its electrical system in balance when accepting intermittent wind power.

Dutton resident Katrina Martin says an international power line proposed, in part, through Pondera and Teton counties in northcentral Montana is being built on the backs of the farmers. Martin has voiced her concern about the diagonal portion of the Montana Alberta Tie Ltd.'s proposed private transmission line since the company announced the project in December 2005. The 215-mile, 230-kilovolt power line project to be built between Great Falls and Lethbridge, Alta., is in the final stages of regulatory approval on both sides of the border. An environmental impact statement was published this spring that outlines three possible routes for the line in Montana. MATL is a Calgary, Alta.-based energy transmission company whose ...The existing economic development, namely farmers on the ground, has to pay a "terrible price for the speculative proposal that wind farms would be developed," Martin said. ...The line's routing options have been known to MATL for months, Martin said. "If Alternative 2 is the only one that can be considered, what's the point?" She said MATL had an "irresponsible attitude" when it comes to route selection.