David Bois - Tonic
When finished it'll provide three times the power of the current largest US wind facility and, if all goes according to plan, there could be more mega wind farms to come.
Community concerns with altered views, nearby airport worries about flight paths and even project ownership changes necessitated by bankruptcy may have gummed up the works, delaying getting to this point of an actual green light. But with shovel meeting soil this week in the Mojave Desert's Tehachapi Pass situated about 75 miles north of Los Angeles, what is described as the country's largest wind energy project is officially underway.
As reported in the business section of the Los Angeles Times, the Alta Wind Energy Center (whose decade long history from inception to the present the Times has deemed "tortured") will eventually churn out enough clean, green electricity to meet the demands of 600,000 homes.
For comparison, the Times notes that the project's projected full-scale energy output exceeds by nearly a factor of three the capacity of the Roscoe Wind Farm in Texas, whose 780 megawatt (MW) output makes it the US's largest currently operating wind facility.
By virtue of the enormous scale of the project site as well the complexity of the business dealings and regulatory processes that have allowed it to avoid the proverbial scrapheap, those keeping tabs on the rapidly shifting wind power landscape will look to the speed at which the project proceeds and comes on line. Alta Wind's success is seen as a predictor of how likely it will be that we may expect more comparably scaled wind projects to go from the drawing board to reality.
This article appears courtesy of Tonic.
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