05/02/08 Working On Wind

Working on Wind. I'm Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report. There are a lot of good places around the northwest that get plenty of wind. Many of these locations are a perfect place for wind turbines that generate clean, renewable energy. Rich Rayhill and his partner with Ridgeline Energy have been meeting a lot of people in Idaho discussing wind power. RAYHILL: We got to meet some folks and got the ball rolling and it was basically he and I driving around the countryside introducing ourselves linking up what we thought were windy spots with what we thought were good transmission. We'd done some studying but it wasn't our business. And it turns out we were lucky, our selections panned out okay. That business has grown over the last several years RAYHILL: We've spread out to about 7-8 states and about 50 projects in various stages of development. We just got a new permit for another 150 turbines in Eastern Idaho and the advantage to us on that is we have an existing transmission line. Not only are windy areas important but you also have to be able to link the power generated with something. Choosing a location is one thing. RAYHILL: When you're first starting out in an area you need at least a year before you can even talk to somebody. They won't talk to you because you won't have any degree of probability that your wind is going to be a viable resource until you've got a year under your belt. Then you start doing your environmental study. And even though we're on private ground we do basically a full blown NEPA type analysis. We can design our wind farm to really tremendously minimize our impact. Many states are really starting to support renewable energy programs and Rayhill says that Idaho has been taking notice. RAYHILL: We've got great support from public policy. In Idaho they look at Oregon and the leadership that Gov. Kulongoski and the Oregon legislature have provided and they're modeling programs in Idaho on that. They are very interested in growing the resources here because they see the development and the development opportunity occurring just across the border. So Oregon has been a great experiment for us to watch and a great success story for Idaho to emulate. For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network. www.harvestcleanenergy.org