Cut Bank Wind Farm To Double In Size

MONTANA, Nov 16 (Neo Natura) - The company Naturener, who bought Montana's largest wind farm, is planning on expanding the size of their Cut Bank operation.

Naturener's first announcement was its intention to more than double the size of the proposed McCormick Ranch Wind Park from 120 to 300 megawatts. That would make the project in Toole and Glacier counties even bigger than the 135-megawatt wind farm in Judith Gap, the state's sole wind farm producing at a large commercial level.

The $500 million wind farm is proposed for 10 miles west of Shelby between U.S. Highway 2 and the Marias River, in Toole and Glacier counties.

Combined, the Alberta and Montana companies were planning 1,800 megawatts of wind power. And both had purchased capacity on a proposed power line between Great Falls and Lethbridge that will ship wind-generated electricity to customers in Montana and Alberta. Naturener now owns that capacity. The company also says it plans to invest $3 billion in developing the full 1,800 megawatts by 2012.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer said that utility lobbyists typically dismiss wind power as being "fine for hippies living on a mountaintop smoking marijuana."

The Montana Department of Environmental Quality is expecting to release an environmental impact statement on the merchant transmission line within a few weeks, said Bill Williams, a Montana-Alberta Tie vice president. The Canadian National Energy Board also is expected to render its decision on the project in a few weeks.

Despite these planned projects Montana is still lagging behind other north-western states in wind farm development.

Montana’s handful of wind farms can generate enough electricity to power about 50,000 homes, or about 145 megawatts. Most of that capacity is one project, the Judith Gap wind farm.

That total isn’t bad, considering Montana’s population. But most states in the Northwest and the northern plains have more.

North Dakota generates slightly more wind electricity than Montana; Wyoming has a maximum wind generation capacity twice as big as Montana’s, with 288 megawatts. Washington, Minnesota and Iowa are approaching 1,000 megawatts each. Most of these states also have major wind farms under construction, while Montana has only one project of any size being built, near Baker.

Some boosters of wind power insist Montana is not lagging behind, and say it’s on the cusp of a boom in new projects, many of which are on the drawing board.

Some of the obstacles being stated for Montana's slowness to develop new wind energy resources are:

• A lack of transmission lines to move large amounts of wind- produced power (or any power) from Montana to major urban markets in the West and Southwest.
• A perceived reluctance on the part of NorthWestern Energy and electric co-ops when it comes to buying and encouraging more wind power. A company-backed bill passed by the 2007 Legislature bars small wind-power projects from wooing away NorthWestern customers, and co-ops are exempt from a law requiring utilities to buy more renewable power, such as wind.
• Wind power is a political football. As Gov. Brian Schweitzer and fellow Democrats have made wind power their cause, Republicans have often resisted it, saying it’s too costly for consumers.