Truck with a wind turbine blade on its way to the Caithness Shepherds Flat wind farm under construction in Eastern Oregon.
It’s been a long time since we reported on the largest wind farm in the world, the 845-megawatt Caithness Shepherds Flat project in Eastern Oregon (in Gilliam and Morrow Counties, to be exact). I think the last time we reported on it was in April, after Google announced that it was investing $100 million in the project. While there isn’t any groundbreaking news to report, the project is moving forward according to schedule and Phase 1 (which includes 70 wind turbines) is supposed to be fully completed by the end of November.
Construction is on schedule and on budget. Work on the substations, interconnection facilities, transmission lines, and electricity collection systems has been finished. 338 foundations (for all three stages) have been built. All in all, the project is more than 50% complete. By August 2012, all 338 wind turbines are projected to be up and running.
Wind power is booming across the U.S. and across the world. Being perhaps the cheapest form of new electricity in most places, it is consistently being chosen over development of coal, nuclear, and natural gas power stations by energy companies and corporations (with and without a green leaning) who can do simple math. Total installed power capacity of wind turbines around the world is expected to go from 197, 039 MW at the end of 2010 to 1,750,000 MW by 2030.
The Caithness Shepherds Flat wind farm is owned by Caithness, GE Energy Financial Services, Google Inc., Sumitomo Corporation of America, and Tyr Energy, and it is being built along the Columbia River Gorge (I guess I wasn’t completely exact above).
Image Credit: OregonDOT
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