‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! blow!" California may soon rant alongside King Lear as it presses to meet Assembly Bill 32's mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions statewide. To achieve that mandate, the California Energy Commission established an energy action plan calling for the state to generate 20 percent of its electricity with renewable resources by 2010, and 33 percent by 2020. For those who fantasize about stopping the Hatchet Ridge wind farm project, here are a few realities:

• California currently generates about 6,000 megawatts from renewable resources.

• Of this, existing wind farms generate 2,700 megawatts, or 45 percent.

• The California Energy Commission says we need another 5,000 megawatts of wind power to reach the 20 percent renewable goal.

Bottom line - in less than three years we must install twice as much wind power as we have in the last 20 years.

Don't say, "Just build more solar." In their calculations, the CEC already factored in an optimistic 2,000 megawatts of new solar power and an additional 1,000 megawatts of geothermal power. (Can anyone say Medicine Lake?)

"Put it somewhere else" also won't cut it. The CEC has identified eight prime onshore wind areas in California with the right combination of high average winds, accessibility, and electric grid infrastructure to make wind turbines economic. Wind farms already dominate three areas on the list. The other five are:

• Pacheco Pass, south of San Jose.

• Solano County (home of our "delta breeze").

• The Salton Sea.

• Lassen County, south of Susanville.

• Eastern Shasta County.

Hatchet Ridge, as proposed, is rated at 100 megawatts. California must build 50 Hatchet Ridges in three years and has just five areas to develop them. To compound the issue even more, to achieve the 33 percent renewable power-by-2020 goal, we'll have to add yet another 5,000 megawatts of wind power statewide in twelve years. Like it or not, 400-foot-tall wind turbines will soon be as ubiquitous to Shasta County as 100-degree summer days and winter chain controls.

In the big scheme though, wind turbine siting issues may be just a small bump. Remember the California Independent System Operator, or Cal ISO, from California's power crisis a few years back?

Cal ISO is the state's electric grid equivalent of your car's cruise control. Let's say you set your cruise control to hold 65 mph. When the car starts up a hill, the cruise control adds a little more gas and holds 65 mph, no problem. Now imagine your car has an 8-cylinder engine. While going up the hill, one cylinder cuts out. Your cruise control notices the slight power drop and adds a little more gas. Again, no problem.

That's what now happens on California's electric grid when the morning summer breezes die off and the wind turbines cut out just as the summer cooling electric load builds. We lose 2,000 megawatts of capacity, but the state's load is 40,000 megawatts, so the ISO schedules other generators to cover the loss.

Back to the car analogy, now imagine that 3 or 4 cylinders suddenly cut out while going up hill. Without a whole spare engine ready to instantly kick in, you'll slow down. Electrical grids, unfortunately, only have one speed. Slowing down a grid means one thing - rotating blackouts. To prevent blackouts and still efficiently use all that new wind and solar power, Cal ISO says the state must:

• Build new gas turbines (!) and hydroelectric plants that can start up in minutes and fill in for solar and wind during low wind periods and at night. (Meanwhile, another branch of the state advocates dismantling hydro plants. Perhaps the state's left hand should meet its right hand once in a while.)

• Develop and install new massive energy storage system technologies to store excess solar and wind energy, such as underground compressed air reservoirs, pumped storage water reservoirs, high energy flywheels, and giant batteries. We're talking batteries equivalent to a million DieHards. Efficiency problems kept hydrogen off their short-list of viable storage technologies.

• Expand our transmission grid to accept new renewable power while leaving room for backup fossil-fuel and hydro power. That means more backyard power lines and transmission towers. I hear the NIMBY's screaming now.

Massive construction. New technologies. Rampant NIMBYism. A short time horizon. Sound's pretty hopeless. Fortunately, we Californians have some aces in the hole - our best and brightest young men and women, who two generations ago took on the Russians and beat them to the moon, and a generation ago turned Santa Clara's orchards into the world's digital capital. See the new generation's scientists competing at the regional Science Bowl next Saturday at Simpson University. You will leave believing we actually can work this all out.

Record Searchlight contributing columnist Keith Ritter can be reached at keithritter_rs@yahoo.com.