The wind farms are running

The wind farms of South Texas are now operational.

After three years of studies, development, lawsuits and environmental problem solving, the Gulf Wind project, a $740 million wind farm on 7,851 acres of the Kenedy Ranch, is all but complete.

"This project is going to set the example for environmental stewardship," said [John Calaway, chief development officer with Babcock & Brown]. "We're delighted this whole project has come together."

Project leaders, Kenedy Foundation members and guests celebrated Wednesday with a ribbon-cutting .

Only a handful of turbines were spinning, but Calaway expects 100 of the 118 turbines to be producing electricity by the end of the month.

The other 18 turbines won't be ready until March. Parts for those turbines were at the port in Galveston during Hurricane Ike, so they were sent back to the Mitsubishi company in Japan to check for possible damage.

Each of the turbines can produce about 2.4 megawatts of power. With all 118 turbines spinning, that is enough energy to power 80,000 Texas homes annually.

There was a considerable amount of opposition to these turbines, mostly from environmentalists concerned about their effect on migratory birds. The Express News discusses that aspect of the story.

The wind farm will sport a bird radar detection system that company officials tout as the first of its kind. The system can automatically stop the blades if the potential for a mass bird kill is detected. Crews currently are running 16 windmills to test the system, but in a month all 118, each standing as high as a 40-story building, should be producing power.

[...]

The [Coastal Habitat Alliance] is petitioning the Federal Aviation Administration to require environmental studies, but it already has failed in its attempts in federal court, the Public Utility Commission and in the state's administrative court

Calaway, who described the often-bitter battle as "a pretty bloody tough situation," said Babcock & Brown has gone above and beyond to protect the environment. The windmills and the roads on the wind farm have been built to avoid the wetlands, he said. And radar crews plotted the flights of birds in the area for three years before determining that most flew far higher than the windmill blades, which reach 419 feet off the ground.

The radar and shutdown system is a precaution against the unlikely event of a weather system forcing birds down into the blades, Calaway said.

"This project is going to set the example for environmental stewardship," he said.

Killing a migrating bird is illegal, according to the international Migratory Bird Treaty Act, said Dawn Whitehead of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife's Corpus Christi office. And although her office can take action if birds are killed, because the project is on private property, it can't stop the project or require environmental analysis.

Whitehead said her biologists have been to the property a "couple of times" since 2005 and have reviewed wildlife reports produced by Babcock & Brown's consultants. She also is trying to formalize an agreement to regularly review the wind farm's bird monitoring data and create an avian and bird protection plan.

"At first blush it would seem a risky project," Whitehead said. "But they really did a lot of work, so we'll just have to wait and see."

I've been a supporter of the wind farms all along, but I certainly hope that Fish and Wildlife will follow up on this and create that bird protection plan. We need to know how effective the efforts have been to minimize the impact of the turbines, and we need a commitment from the Kenedy Ranch to make adjustments if that impact is higher than expected. And if they're as good as their promises have been, then we need to learn from what they've done, because others will be following in their footsteps.

Most of the state's wind power is produced in West Texas, which generally is windier than the coast. But Calaway said the coastal wind, particularly that between Corpus Christi and the Mexican border, has the advantage of blowing in the afternoon, when the power is most needed. West Texas wind generally blows at night.

The coast also is attractive for wind farms because, unlike West Texas, there's also transmission capacity on the coast to move the power. The state has approved a $5 billion transmission project to eventually alleviate the bottleneck in West Texas.

We have a responsibility to get this right. Thanks to South Texas Chisme for the tip.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on January 10, 2009 to The great state of Texas