SPANISH FORK — An embattled wind farm development set to begin construction next year in Spanish Fork may serve as a microcosm for the future of wind energy in Utah and across the nation.

The farm, a project of Utah-based Wasatch Wind, will be the state's first commercial wind farm. It already has been delayed after citizens in Spanish Fork requested that it be moved farther from homes, to a site at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon.

Finding investors was difficult, and the looming expiration date on a state tax credit, on which the project depends, promises an arduous battle still ahead as supporters work to get the credit restored.

Like the wind power industry as a whole, the Wasatch Wind project has weathered the early storm and is poised to move forward but remains shrouded in lingering questions.

Wind's comeback

Wind energy, at one point essentially doomed because of prohibitive production costs associated with inferior technology, has made a resurgence in the past 20 years as technological advances have made it financially viable.

Prices, which were as high as 80 cents per kilowatt-hour in 1980, have fallen to between 4 cents and 6 cents per kilowatt-hour. The U.S. Department of Energy hopes to decrease that even further, to 3 cents per kilowatt-hour by 2012.

Improvements in the wind turbine airfoils, which were originally based on designs that pre-dated World War II, were the first major breakthrough, said Jim Johnson, a site operations engineer for the National Wind Technology Center, a division of the DOE, near Boulder, Colo.

"If you pick a rotor that's 10 meters across and replace the original air foil with a new, fiberglass one, you increase energy production by 30 percent," he said.

According to DOE statistics, wind power is the fastest-growing energy technology in the United States, expanding at an annual rate of 30 percent to 40 percent. Total wind energy capacity in the United States has more than doubled since 2002, and last month the industry hit the milestone of 10,000 megawatts of installed capacity — enough to power 2.5 million homes on the average day.

Dave Eskelsen, spokesman for PacifiCorp, which serves power customers in six Western states, including Utah, said falling prices for wind energy have made it a viable alternative.

"I think that's why you're seeing more utilities across the nation and around the world investing in wind energy," he said.

Tax credits

In the United States, however, the development of wind farms has been tied to the availability of renewable energy tax credits. And since the federal credit has historically been renewed every other year, growth has been unstable. In years where the credit is available, the number of new projects explodes. In years when it is not, it falls off to nearly nothing.