We are now selling subscriptions reservations to the Galbraith project for $60.  This project will power approximately 1000 homes and your reservation means when the project goes up you will have the option of being one of them.   The project is still too early in development to sell the$6000 subscriptions, so these non refundable deposits secure your piece of the pie and show the world that there is demand for local wind power.  With just a few hundred subscription reservations we can show the skeptics that their is $millions in local consumer dollars waiting to help get this project off the ground.

CCWC needs your help providing positive comments to Whatcom County on our Conditional Use Permit (C.U.P.) application for the Galbraith Mountain Turbine Project.

Please submit comments to:
Alex Cleanthous  acleanth@co.whatcom.wa.us

Read more about the Galbraith project here

Thank you for your support!

Join us from 4-6 pm at our new office located at 314 E Holly Street #202

to celebrate our new location, and our upcoming Whatcom County Project!

Whatcom County has accepted CCWC’s conditional use permit for a community wind turbine project on Galbraith Mountain.  The project is planned to consist of one large wind turbine of 2.5 MW – enough to power about 1000 energy efficient homes.

Read more in the CCWC press release

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.