Alaska’s first major wind farm could be operational by 2010

According to officials with Cook Inlet Region Inc., the Native corporation that plans to develop the 30 megawatt Fire Island wind farm, construction could begin on the state’s first wind farm as early as this summer. But the project has been a long time in the works and it still has a few hurdles to clear.

Plans for the wind farm call for twenty GE 1.5 megawatt wind turbines to be erected on the largely-barren Fire Island and connected to the mainland via a three-mile long cable. The electricity will arrive at Point Campbell and be added to the regional grid that runs from Homer to Fairbanks.

CIRI is partnering with enXco to develop the Fire Island wind farm, but some lingering obstacles, mostly regulatory in nature, still need to be cleared before anything can be set in stone.

The Alaska Legislature approved $25 million last year to construct the seabed transmission line, but before the cable can be laid, developers need to ink long-term power purchase agreements with Alaska utilities.

CIRI spokesman Jim Jager told the Anchorage Daily News last week: “Of course any of this can be thrown sideways by about a thousand different things. But our anticipation is that there aren’t any show stoppers … and there will be power coming off the island late next year — in 2010.”

The project has been bandied about for nearly ten years and has been scaled back from its original plan of providing 100MW of wind power to the region.

The Army Corps is accepting public comments on the proposed Fire Island wind farm through February 19.

Image: CC licensed by Looking Glass on flickr