AMARILLO, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 24, 2006--Xcel Energy has issued a request for proposals for about 40,500 megawatt-hours of annual renewable energy or renewable energy certificates to be generated from renewable technologies other than wind turbines.

Reaffirming their mission as “stewards of land and livestock,” members of Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association adopted policy Oct. 13 calling for enhanced government support for environmental conservation, an independent evaluation of industrial wind farms and efforts to address the growing shortage of large-animal veterinarians.

Nine landowners concerned about OG&E putting transmission lines in bar ditches along their land voiced complaints to the Woodward County Commission Monday, saying the county needed to hold the energy company accountable. ...According to another land owner, concrete bases 20 feet deep are being constructed to hold the poles for the transmission lines. Klick said, "These poles are 80 feet tall. They have a detrimental value to everybody's land."

Six wind tower sections left DMI Industries, located at the Tulsa Port of Catoosa, on Tuesday en route to a wind farm site in northern Texas. ...Less than a year ago, DMI Industries, an Otter Tail company, bought a plant built for Griffin Wheel -- a railcar manufacturer that never moved in -- to extend its geographic reach and meet the growing demand for wind towers in the southwestern states.

NORMAN- The Oklahoma Wind Power Initiative, along with the Oklahoma Renewable Energy Council, will be hosting renewable energy workshops in December to help Oklahomans develop the state’s cash crops of wind and biofuels.

The only people who don't like wind farms are the people who don't have one - that was the punch line of a humorous story T. Boone Pickens told the crowd at Revolution: Oklahoma Wind Conference on Tuesday. But on Wednesday, conference attendees heard from a few people who are concerned that the wind industry is growing too fast to fully account for its effect on the environment, the economy and a multitude of secondary issues.

The closure this month of Trinity's Tank Car Inc.'s freight railcar manufacturing plant in Oklahoma City affected about 250 hourly and administrative employees. Tulsa-based Trinity Structural Towers Inc., which produced towers for wind farms, closed Jan. 16. About 130 hourly and administrative workers lost their jobs. Employees at both facilities were given a 60-day notice, the company said.

The wind that comes sweeping down Oklahoma's plains isn't powering nearly as many Edmond homes as it could be, officials say, even though signing up for the service is as easy as filling out a one-page online form. ...Since the inception of the wind power program in 2004, Edmond Electric has advertised it as a "pure and simple" option for customers, saying that using 100 kilowatt hours - enough to power 100 light bulbs for 100 hours - of wind energy per month for a year has the same environmental benefit as planting a third of an acre of trees or not driving a car for 1,800 miles. But Edmond residents don't seem to be buying into the idea. ...In the end, Edmond Electric plans to continue to offer wind power despite the low subscriber numbers. "Some of our customers have a real interest in an environmentally good power supply," Burgett said. "We'll continue to meet our customers' desires."

"Make no mistake, this is all about the production and the money," said Greg Adams, a technical consultant who develops wind farms for Edmond-based Chermac Energy Corp. "I can build a wind farm anywhere in the state of Oklahoma. To make it profitable is another story. None of these wind farms get built unless they have a return on investment. That's what investors are looking for." What makes a good location?

"The normal house uses approximately 3,000 kilowatts a month," Travis said at the time. "The generator will produce approximately 1,000 to 1,200 kilowatts a month at eight mile per hour winds, based on an eight-hour day." But that has not been the case for Lingenfelter's turbine, which has produced only about 770 kilowatts of power since it was first activated June 1 ..."It's far underperformed."

"The immediate challenge is to build transmission infrastructure to send wind energy to end users in other states," he said. Paying for the wind power transmission infrastructure is a complicated proposition involving state and federal regulators, the Southwest Power Pool, wind farm owners, landowners, Oklahoma-based utilities, utilities in other states - many east of the Mississippi River - who would buy the wind power created in Oklahoma and end users. "Our challenge is to encourage orderly development of this resource," Fleischaker said. The challenge includes fair compensation for Oklahoma resources. "We do not want to deliver an industry that exports revenues out of state," he said.

The industry of building and operating wind turbines is "going big guns." That's Rocky Waller's perception as his agency and others create programs to keep workers in this emerging industry safe. ..."There are people going into this industry that have never worked around a wind farm construction site or within the turbines themselves," Waller said. "We are talking shoe salesmen, burger flippers and police officers. "They don't realize the dangers."

If a proposed transition line from Woodward to Guymon runs through Mead Ferguson's north Woodward County land, he thinks that is just fine. ...Mead was among 60 to 70 people who attended the first of four open houses offered by Oklahoma Gas and Electric. The meeting was held at the Josie Adams Cultural Center and was intended to act as an open exchange between the public and company executive with regard to a planned transmission line construction project that could impact land owners here. ...The transmission lines have been planned by the company to address an historic lack of transmission needed to carry the additional electricity that is produced by wind turbines here.

Landowners along a proposed 120-mile Oklahoma Gas & Electric Co. power line should join together to oppose the line, a Woodward landowner said at a meeting Tuesday. Candyce Kline of Woodward was one of about 60 people concerned with the route of the proposed power line from Woodward to northwest Oklahoma City to be built by 2010 by OG&E. Rate payers would see an increase of about $1.50 on electric bills to pay for the line, which will deliver power from wind turbines.

Oklahoma has long been known for its abundant reserves of oil and gas, but Norman-area lawmakers want to add wind power to the list of leading energy sources. Already, 420 towering wind turbines in western Oklahoma provide about 3 percent of the state's electricity, according to the Oklahoma Wind Power Initiative, a joint project of the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University.

Wind farm leasing in Oklahoma is a little like the Wild West. Experts say there's virtually no regulation and lots of opportunity for landowners to either profit or make deals they'll later regret. "It's very much a wildcatter's environment with a lot of speculation going on," said former Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner Jim Roth, who now handles alternative energy legal issues in his job as an attorney with the Phillips Murrah law firm.

Westbound drivers along Intertstate 40 can't help but crane their necks at the site of dozens of wind generators that have gone up on both sides of the interstate in western Oklahoma.

Wind farms will not be allowed on the state's public wildlife management areas. The Oklahoma Wildlife Conservation Commission voted unanimously Monday to prohibit wind energy development on all of the state's public wildlife management areas. Earlier this year, OG&E wanted to build a wind farm on the Cooper Wildlife Management Area near Woodward, property owned by the state Wildlife Department and used primarily for hunting. After public opposition from sportsmen, OG&E withdrew its request to the state Wildlife Department.

For $50,000, Oklahoma can get the same kind of comprehensive study Kansas got from Southwest Power Pool on the state's wind power resource. The plan could be finished by spring 2008 and would provide the guidance state leaders need to form a plan for new electricity generation and transmission upgrades. ...Bary K. Warren, director of transmission policy and compliance for the Empire District Electric Co. in Joplin, Mo., cautioned the group to keep projections for future wind generation development modest. Companies may put out press releases indicating their intent to build future capacity, but unforeseen developments may significantly limit the amount of wind generation that actually gets built, he said.

Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co. today filed a renewable energy program with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission detailing its commitment to quadruple its wind energy capacity in the state to 770 megawatts (MW). The company described as an important first step its plan to construct a high-capacity transmission line betweenWoodward and Oklahoma City to further develop the state's vast wind energy potential. The filing also includes a request to begin providing a renewable energy option that will allow more OG&E customers to choose up to 100 percent renewable energy.