Clean energy groups in San Diego County are hoping to spark a wind energy rush in a region far better known for its abundant solar power.

Advocates say that California will have to accelerate the use of utility-scale wind power to meet its aggressive renewable portfolio standard, which requires at least 33 percent of the state's electrical generation to come from clean energy by 2020. And many are banking on a future wind energy boom in San Diego County to help it succeed.

So far, however, the county's efforts to promote wind production have been sluggish, largely because of limited permitting experience and a reluctance of rural communities to embrace turbines due to aesthetic and noise concerns.

"There is wind-generation capacity out in the eastern portion of San Diego County," said Jason Anderson, vice president of CleanTECH San Diego. "But development ... is not what it could be right now, and a lot of that [is due to] political and regulatory issues."

The trade association organized its first San Diego Wind Energy Symposium on June 14 for industry officials, policy experts and community members to address the county's opportunities for wind power and the unique challenges it faces.

The City of San Diego is already an established solar leader among American cities. It has more than 6,700 solar installations totaling just over 90 megawatts — ranking first and second in California in those categories, respectively, according to Solar-California, a service that promotes solar energy.

Anderson said that adding wind farms to the county's renewables profile would be a "positive" for a region that already boasts a burgeoning wind energy equipment industry.

San Diego and surrounding counties are home to more than 40 companies that work in the wind industry supply chain, he said. CleanTECH believes that coming wind installations will be an engine for adding more green jobs.

"As these [wind] projects get off the ground, we see and hope for potential job growth and job creation in San Diego."

Iberdrola Provides Spark

Portland, Ore.-based Iberdrola Renewables, the U.S. division of the Spanish wind giant, is seen as providing a vital spark to San Diego's still-embryonic wind industry.

The company is in the permitting stages of its 200-megawatt Tule Wind Project in the McCain Valley in San Diego's East County, which will produce enough power to serve about 60,000 local homes when it goes online in 2012.

"This is the first wind farm that the county is having to permit, so they're learning the process of how to permit this as we all go through it for the first time together," Harley McDonald, Iberdrola's U.S. business developer, told SolveClimate News.

Iberdrola is the second-largest wind developer in the United States behind Juno Beach, Fla.-based NextEra Energy Resources, with 4,600 megawatts of wind projects up and running. In California, the firm has a 45-megawatt wind farm in Palm Springs and a 150-megawatt farm in Solano County.



It has also proposed the 246-megawatt Manzana Wind Project in the Tehachapi region of Eastern Kern County, which will become the first wind project owned by Pacific Gas & Electric, California's biggest utility.

San Diego County has up to 6,900 megawatts in potential wind power resources, of which up to 1,530 megawatts — enough to power roughly 380,000 households — is available for development, according to a 2005 report by the California Energy Commission.