You can help influence the outcome by voting for the project on the award program’s website.

And, while you’re in the web 2.0 mood, head on over to facebook and become a fan of the new Utah Wind Pioneers group.  Looks like a great way to keep wind top-of-mind in the social media world.

Here are 5 positive signs that Utah is poised to become a real player in the West’s wind-power landscape.

1. Boston-based First Wind chose Utah over other attractive options for it’s largest wind farm

Wind turbines at FirstWind's Milford wind farm. Photo courtesy of milfordwind.com

Arguably one of the smartest and most aggressive US companies in the wind generation businesses, First Wind, looked around the United States and chose Milford, in southern Utah, as the location for its largest wind farm. The company didn’t receive any incentives from the state for its 203 MW facility, which it hopes to expand into the largest farm in the US. And, it had plenty of options. Nevada, Idaho, and Wyoming all have great wind resources close enough to California, the source of the real demand for renewable energy in the West.

The company plays it coy when asked why it chose Utah. Sure, there’s the great story about the “wind kids” at Milford High. They helped identify the wind resource at Milford. But, it’s hard to swallow that a company as sophisticated as First Wind threw down $376 million just because the students had did a little leg work for them. There are also rumors that the winds at Milford are unique in that they blow strongest during the day, when power is needed the most.

But even that would likely not be enough to sway such an important decision. First Wind has staked its future on Milford, and before you make an investment like that, you analyze a lot of complex factors: transmission costs, operating costs, land leasing costs, and incentives. But there were no incentives.

The bottom line: Utah is an attractive and cost-competitive location for wind farm development.

2. Utah now has one of the most competitive incentive programs for renewable energy development

Approved in the 2009 legislative session, Utah’s Renewable Energy Development Incentive program offers up to 100% tax rebates to companies that develop commercial-scale renewable energy generation projects, such as wind farms. The incentive went into effect this summer, and Utah has already had a great deal of interest from large wind producers. Although it’s unlikely that a full 100% rebate would be granted, rebates in the 50-80% range would still be very significant to wind developers.  The state’s portion of sales taxes spent on the project, income taxes from worker salaries, and corporate income taxes can all be rebated.

Remember, First Wind chose Utah without any incentive. So, the incentive really should be the icing on the cake for other companies looking to site wind farms within easy transmission range of the California marketplace.

3. Community support for to wind development is building

As we’ve seen around the country, communities are often fearful of wind development. They’re anxious about noise issues, view impacts, and property values. But when projects go in, and those fears don’t come to life, support grows. Take for instance the Spanish Fork wind park by Wasatch Wind. The conservative community there has embraced the farm and is now branding their community with a renewable image. The folks in Milford have seen the jobs created and the economic value of the state’s largest wind farm.

4. Utah has innovative research and academic leaders hot on the case

Until recently, Utah’s academic and research communities were not focusing on wind. Now several leading thinkers are working full-time to advance Utah’s position in the renewable space. Cathy Hartman and Edwin Stafford have started the Center for the Market Diffusion of Renewable Energy and Clean Technology at USU. They’re working to help create a “rural renaissance” in Utah, bringing the economic benefits of wind development to rural areas. The team recently released a compelling economic study of the impacts of a potential new wind farm in Summit County at a location called Porcupine Ridge.  And the two have been working on a documentary called “Harnessing Canyon Winds,” which they hope to release next spring. In short, we now have reputable business minds helping to tackle the economic and political challenges to wind development.

USU is also home to the Center for Active Sensing and Imaging (CASI).  With the help of USTAR, the CASI team is developing an intriguing set of tools to “map the wind” with lasers.  If successful at creating an economically viable service, CASI will be well on the way to helping wind farms increase their productivity by 10-30%. This sort of productivty improvement would have a dramatic impact on increasing wind’s economic competitiveness and helping developers finance projects.

Bob Barson recently outlined CASI’s plans at a recent “Leonardo After Hours” event. CASI’s first technology, which has already been deployed on a test scale, is called “Valid Wind.” The team floats inexpensive air balloons with special reflective tape in the wind stream.  Then, they bounce lasers off the balloons allowing them to precisely map the wind flow. Currently, the technology is quite “low tech,” requiring manual tracking of the balloons with laser range finders. However, the team is working to automate the process.  When this is completed, the technology will allow wind companies to validate their own anemometer testing results, quickly and inexpensively, making sure they don’t miss crucial wind flows. CASI’s second generation wind-mapping technology, which is still “on the bench,” is called “Volume Wind.” This system will use more sophisticated laser measuring systems, currently used for air quality testing, to create a large 3-D map of airflow in an area.  When completed, this technology has the potential to totally revolutionize wind farm siting, reducing the need for expensive anemometers and dramatically decreasing the time needed to test a location.

5. So far, Utah has avoided significant resistance to wind development

This final observation falls in the “knock on wood” category. But so far, Utah has avoided the sort of controversy that is building around wind development in surrounding states, particularly Wyoming. High Country News recently published an in-depth story explaining the surprising resistance to wind development in Wyoming. In particular, traditional energy interests are resisting development because it tends to block off their routes to drill for fossil fuel sources. On the other side of the coin, environmentalists are raising concerns of sage grouse populations they say are threatened by development. Fortunately, Utah’s geology may help us avoid many of these problems. Our basin-and-range geography places the best wind sites away from fossil fuel sites (for the most part). And, so far, the best wind sites seem to have no serious wildlife habitat concerns. We’ll  watch this issue closely, but hope that Utah can avoid the pitfalls seen elsewhere and perhaps even benefit from developers coming to Utah, who don’t want to deal with the issues in Wyoming.

Standing in front of solar panels at a Florida sun farm, President Obama announced $3.4 billion in smart grid funding to be spent in 49 states.  Clean energy enthusiasts and clean tech investors applauded the investment.  And it was a big story in the national green energy press.

Of course the logical question in Utah was: “How much of the funding will Utah get?”

Unfortunately, there’s no clear answer to that question. Only time will tell how much direct funding hits Utah.  But here’s what we know now.

The Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) will receive $53.9 million of the smart grid funding for its Western Interconnection Synchrophasor Program (WISP). The funding will be used across the west in 14 states, including Utah.  The federal funding from the Smart Grid Investment Grant initiative will be leveraged 1:1 with matching dollars from utility companies, for a total project estimated at $107.8 million. Details about the Smart Grid Investment Grant program can be found on WECC’s website.

Unbeknownst to many Utahns, the WECC is based right here in Salt Lake City (in Research Park), employing more than 50 Utahns to help ensure the reliability of the west’s power grid.

According to Rachel Sherrard, Director of Communications for WECC, the funding will be primarily used to install new or upgrade existing synchophasor units, which provide real-time information to grid operators about the status of the bulk electric system.  In all, more than 250 phasor measurement units (PMUs) will be upgraded or purchased and installed by electrical utilities, including PacifiCorp, the parent company of Utah’s Rocky Mountain Power.

PacifiCorp, as a participating member with several other western utilities, is contributing $800,000 in funding and resources  to the PMU installation project. (Not all that money will be spent in Utah, as PacifiCorp serves several states.) A preliminary map of PMU locations shows seven potential synchrophasors being installed within Utah, with two near First Wind’s major new wind farm near Milford.

Fortunately, even those PMUs installed outside the state still benefit Utah.  The synchrophasors provide increased “visibility” of the grid, meaning operators can manage the entire system more effectively and efficiently, saving energy and preventing outages and downtime.

The smart grid investment will have particular value to alternative energy development.  Because wind and solar generation output varies with the weather (and time of day), those operating the grid must now manage a more complicated system.  However, if operators can “see” what is happening at the wind farm, they can make adjustments to accommodate increased generation.  Eventually, operators may even use this visibility to decrease fossil fuel generation at fossil fuel burning plants when the wind is blowing hard or the sun is shining brightly.

An additional benefit for wind power development will be an increase in transmission capacity. Vickie VanZandt, the WISP Project Manager, estimates that up to 100 megawatts of additional transmission capacity will be added to transport electricity from states like Utah to California and the west coast.  The project accomplishes this increase in the “size of the pipe” by more efficiently using existing infrastructure.  For alternative energy transmission to achieve the real scale needed to combat climate change, significantly more transmission lines will need to be constructed.

A study commissioned by WECC estimated economic benefit of the smart grid investments, over 40 years, to be more than $630 million for reduced capacity cost for intermittent energy generation and increased usage of alternative generation technologies.

Clean energy supporters would be well served to learn more about WECC, which is responsible for coordinating the reliability aspects of the energy grid for most of the western US, part of Canada, and a small portion of Mexico.  This public-private partnership operates two reliability monitoring centers, one in Vancouver, Washington and the other in Loveland, Colorado.  These two centers back each other up in the case of a major disruption and provide visibility to the largest geographic area of any electricity coordinating entity. (There are eight, including WECC, across the US.)

With the grid being one of the largest limiting factors in alternative energy development, WECC will play a large role in the coming years as more and more dispersed generation sites connect to our distribution system.

Wyoming wind farm that sells "renewable energy certificates" to Rocky Mountain Power

Being a relatively astute consumer, I’ve always known that my Blue Sky dollars aren’t really sending clean wind power to my home.  That’s not how the system works.  There’s no way for the power company to direct the small percentage of clean energy in the system to particular homes or businesses.  Not everyone gets this point, as was made evident in an interesting story on NPR last week as part of it’s “How Green Is It?” series.

What I did learn from the NPR story, which rocked my boat a bit, was that my Blue Sky dollars aren’t going to purchase wind power directly or even at all.  Rocky Mountain Power uses Blue Sky funds to buy “renewable energy certificates on your behalf.”  Renewable energy certificates are sold by wind power (and other renewable operators) in addition to selling their power.  Essentially, certificates are a way for operators to make more money to offset the additional cost of production, without having to sell their power at rates that disallow power companies from buying. (Many states mandate power companies buy from the cheapest sources, without regard to the environmental costs of production).

So, even though Rocky Mountain Power says it’s buying certificates from Wyoming wind farms, that doesn’t mean the company is buying power from those farms.  Now Rocky Mountain Power appears to have an aggressive approach to actually buying and developing renewables as part of their portfolio, so they are probably buying the power too, but not necessarily.  In fact, many programs around the country, like Blue Sky, don’t purchase the renewable power. It’s too far away or to logistically challenging to get the power to their grid. So, they just purchase the certificates.

Blue Sky works because some customers want to support renewable energy, and they are not too concerned with the details. It’s a voluntary program, so nobody is forced into participating.  But that’s also the program’s biggest downfall.  Only a relatively few people will voluntarily pay more for their electricity.  These folks realize that the “retail” price of electricity doesn’t really include all the costs of the environmental impacts of our electricity production.

Rocky Mountain Power and other electric companies, tout renewable energy programs, like Blue Sky, as evidence that they really want to support alternative energy development. But the true test of their commitment to clean energy is coming with a system that attempts to include the environmental costs of production, like the Waxman/Markey legislation that recently passed the US House of Representatives. Will Rocky Mountain Power embrace the challenge of producing 20% of its power from renewables by 2020?  Or will in resist the change?  I personally hope the company will not take the easy route and blame the feds for raising energy prices. Why not take a positive approach and help people understand that the increases in theeir power bill are serving to help fight climate change and ensure future generations enjoy the land we enjoy.

Unfortunately, the early signs are not good for Rocky Mountain Power’s messaging strategy.  Last week, the company’s CEO, Richard Walje, told a Utah legislative committee, “The legislation that has currently been passed in the (U.S.) House of Representatives is going to impose large costs on our customers that we do not have any near-term way to avoid.”  Now I know he was talking to the conservative Utah legislature, but I’m hopeful in the future the language will be tinged with cooperation and laced with language supporting the advance of clean tech.