HB 1081 is being heard in the Senate on Wednesday the 22nd at 8:00 am.  This bill (with one modification explained below), would provide a universal permitting pathway for distributed renewable energy projects across the state.  Everything from rooftop solar, to community wind, to dairy digesters would be assured of a responsible permitting pathway.  It would support counties and cities in creating permitting ordinances for these technologies and provide an alternate path if the jurisdiction chose not to develop their own ordinance.

We need your support now to make sure that there is sufficient momentum to ensure the bill makes it to the finish line amongst all the competing priorities the senate faces. There are three things you can do:

Show up at 8:00 am on the 22nd and testify in favor of the bill. Send an email or call the senators offices on the list below,  a comma separated list of emails is provided for a bulk email, if any of these is  your senator please send a personal email, call, and make sure they know you are a constituent.  Senator Ranker is especially important to contact.

You need to let them know that you support HB1081 applied to all distributed generation.

Right now the bill is perfect, except it only applies to “net metering” projects, but distributed wind, anaerobic digestion, community solar, etc are often not net metered.  The definition changed to “distributed generation” would include all renewable generation under 5 MW, basically all the renewable projects that are too small to take the existing state permitting pathway.

Energy, Natural Resources & Marine Waters Committee:

Kevin Ranker (Chair), (Bellingham, Mt Vernon, Anecortes, San Juan islands)
kevin.ranker@leg.wa.gov            (360) 786-7678

Debbie Regala   (Tacoma)
debbie.regala@leg.wa.gov          (360) 786-7652

Jerome Delvin   (Richland)
delvin.jerome@leg.wa.gov         (360) 786-7614

Bob Morton (N. of Spokane)
morton.bob@leg.wa.gov             (360) 786-7612

Karen Fraser (Olympia)
karen.fraser@leg.wa.gov             (360) 786-7642

Jim Hargrove (Olympic Peninsula)

jim.hargove@leg.wa.gov              (360) 786-7646

Edward Murray (Seattle, U dist.)

edward.murray@leg.wa.gov      (360) 786-7628

Val Stevens  (w slope of N Cascades)

stevens.val@leg.wa.gov              (360) 786-7676

Dan Swecker  (Centrailia)
swecker.dan@leg.wa.gov            (360) 786-7638

William Bridges (staff)
william.bridges@leg.wa.gov       (360) 786-7416

kevin.ranker@leg.wa.gov, debbie.regala@leg.wa.gov, delvin.jerome@leg.wa.gov,
morton.bob@leg.wa.gov, karen.fraser@leg.wa.gov, jim.hargove@leg.wa.gov,
edward.murray@leg.wa.gov, stevens.val@leg.wa.gov, swecker.dan@leg.wa.gov,
william.bridges@leg.wa.gov.

We’ve just settled in to our new office in the Fine Arts Building: 314 E Holly, Suite #202, Bellingham WA 98225

Stop by and visit us!

The Bellingham Herald wrote a thoughtful and very informative piece on our proposed project at Galbraith Mountain.

Read the story HERE

We’ve taken the first step toward developing a community wind turbine project on Galbraith Mountain by submitting a conditional use permit application with Whatcom County.  The project will most likely consist of one large turbine of 2 to 3 MW in capacity.

Read the CCWC Press Release.

A neighbor of and subscriber to our first turbine Pastor Richard Rentfro was an enthusiastic supporter of community wind.  He died peacefully in his sleep October 21.   Only three months earlier he wrote us the attached letter.

Rev Rentfro letter

This morning the US Treasury grant was deposited in the bank account for First Up!.   That final piece completes  the development of this turbine.  CCWC will be setting this LLC off on its own.  We will be repaying bridge loans to the project from private lenders in the next few days. There will remain a relatively small loan from CCWC to First Up! which will be repaid as First Up! sells the remainder of the subscriptions available.  This is exciting to have our first project fully out of the development stage.   Three Bar G #3 will be applying for it’s treasury grant in the next couple weeks, and Three Bar G #1 is just starting construction and seeking bridge loans as First Up pays its off.  We have a handful of other projects we hope to start by the end of the year before the incentives change.  Should be an exiting couple of months till the end of the year.

The Announcement came out this week that we received ~$128k from the USDA REAP program for our third turbine.  This turbine will also be on the 3 Bar G ranch near the existing 3 Bar G wind turbine.  The two turbines will share a power line and access road.  This 225 kW project was originally planned to be the first turbine on the prairie and another even larger turbine was planned for after that. Thus they were named 3 Bar G #1 and 3 Bar G #2.  Unfortunately but permitting problems pushed those projects back and we started a third smaller project 3 Bar G #3 which is now up and running.  It is good to be moving forward.

The 3 Bar G wind turbine hit a snag when its yaw motor gear jammed, manufacturer’s defect.   They had a new gear out to the site and Del got it replaced before the wind picked back up.  Good job all.

September 1st, around 6pm, Ken from Halus, Joel from Highland, and Boyd and Dave from Cascade Community Wind commissioned our second turbine!  Maintenance training for our local crew was going on for most of the day along with commissioning activities.

CCWC’s next turbine will be going in about 100 yards south of this turbine and use the same roads and power lines.

Moving Forward ….

Thursday August 18th at 6pm First Up! passed the 5o Megawatt hour mark.  What is 5o Megawatt hours?  enough energy to supply 12 efficient homes for a year, that in the first two months of this turbines operation.  Since the first kinks were worked out in late June the turbine has operated trouble free and automatically.  We have only received one call from a neighbor since we started and that was so he could tell us how proud he was of it.

The 3 Bar G turbine should be running by the end of the month.