Evanston wind farm set to spin

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Wyoming's largest wind farm — a $150 million, 144-megawatt project in Uinta County — is nearly complete and slated to go online by the end of the year.

Construction on the 80-wind-turbine facility along the Bear River Divide northeast of Evanston wrapped up recently on time and under budget. Crews were busy testing the facility this week, said Steve Stengel, spokesman for FPL Energy, a Florida-based utility that built the farm and will operate it.

"We're making sure the turbine operates as it was designed," he said. "They'll put each individual turbine through a series of tests to make sure that they operate as designed."

PPM Energy, based in Portland, Ore. and a division of ScottishPower, will purchase the power from the Uinta County site and market it to customers in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado.

Two years in the works, the wind farm is the third and largest in Wyoming. Its turbines are capable of powering 43,000 homes.

Their blades encompass an area 262 feet in diameter and spin 17 times per minute, slower than most wind turbines but safer for birds and more efficient. The technology has been used in Europe and California.

"The actual construction process was about 112 days and, given some of the weather conditions up there with the snow, the construction team did a really outstanding job getting the facility ready to go," Stengel said.

The project, on state and private grazing land, was made possible by the Wyoming legislature's approval of a measure that provides a tax break on equipment purchased to produce electricity from renewable energy.

PPM spokeswoman Jan Johnson said interest in wind energy is increasing, partly due to advances in technology, larger wind farms and the volatility of other energy markets, such as natural gas.

"One thing about wind power is there's no fuel cost, so there's no volatility," she said. "That's been a big factor."

Uinta County was chosen because of its relatively high wind speeds and distance from bottlenecks in the electricity transmission system.

FPL worked closely with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Wyoming Game and Fish Department to determine best placement of the turbines to reduce danger to birds.