The Altamont Pass wind farm is located in the

Altamont Pass Altamont Pass, formerly Livermore Pass, is a low mountain pass in the Diablo Range of Northern California between Livermore in the Livermore Valley and Tracy in the San Joaquin Valley. The name is actually applied to two distinct but nea ...

of the

Diablo Range The Diablo Range is a mountain range in the California Coast Ranges subdivision of the Pacific Coast Ranges in northern California, United States. It stretches from the eastern San Francisco Bay Area at its northern end to the Salinas Valley a ...

Northern California Northern California (commonly shortened to NorCal) is a geocultural region that comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California, spanning the northernmost 48 of the state's List of counties in California, 58 counties. Northern Ca ...

. It is one of the earliest wind farms in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. The first wind turbines were placed on the Altamont in the early 1980s by Fayette Manufacturing Corporation, on land owned by cattle rancher Joe Jess. The

wind farm A wind farm, also called a wind park or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundred wind turbines covering an exten ...

is composed of 4,930 relatively small

wind turbine A wind turbine is a device that wind power, converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. , hundreds of thousands of list of most powerful wind turbines, large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, were generating over ...

s of various types, making it at one time the largest wind farm in the world in terms of capacity. Altamont Pass is still one of the largest concentration of wind turbines in the world, with a capacity of 576 megawatts (MW), producing about 125 MW on average and 1.1 terawatt-hours (TWh) yearly. They were installed after the

1970s energy crisis The 1970s energy crisis occurred when the Western world, particularly the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, faced substantial petroleum shortages as well as elevated prices. The two worst crises of this period wer ...

in response to favorable tax policies for investors.

In the media

When the first windfarms appeared in 1981, on the Altamont hills alongside the

portion of the I-580 freeway, the appearance of the modern windmill generated media excitement and public interest. This portion of the freeway was an increasingly used corridor for growing the bedroom communities of Tracy, Lodi and Modesto serving the Bay Area of California (Oakland, San Francisco and Pleasanton). Daily commuters crowded past the otherwise barren cattle ranches for several hours each day. By 1985, the Altamont Pass was crowded with over 26 different windfarms. The increased visibility from the nearby I-580 freeway, which had once sparked the media and community's interest, was now widely regarded as a growing eyesore. Successful windfarms at the Altamont Pass encouraged the development of further industrial wind areas in

southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural List of regions of California, region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its densely populated coastal reg ...

. These windfarms, in the

Tehachapi Pass Tehachapi Pass ( Kawaiisu: ''Tihachipia'', meaning "hard climb") is a mountain pass crossing the Tehachapi Mountains in Kern County, California. Traditionally, the pass marks the northeast end of the Tehachapis and the south end of the Sierra N ...

, led to wider recognition, after windmills played a role as a prominent backdrop in several feature films of the mid- and late 1980s, including the 1985 film based on the

Bret Easton Ellis Bret Easton Ellis (born March 7, 1964) is an American author and screenwriter. Ellis was one of the literary Brat Pack (literary), Brat Pack and is a self-proclaimed satirist whose trademark technique as a writer is the expression of extreme acts ...

novel '' Less than Zero'', featuring Andrew McCarthy and Robert Downey, Jr.

Environmental effects

Modern wind turbines and nuclear power plants kill about 0.3 to 0.4 birds per GWh generated, without climate change effects, in comparison with 5.18 birds per GWh with fossil fuels power plants. However, the small turbines used at Altamont in 2007 were dangerous to various raptors that hunt

California ground squirrel The California ground squirrel (''Otospermophilus beecheyi''), also known as the Beechey ground squirrel, is a common and easily observed ground squirrel of the western United States and the Baja California Peninsula; it is common in Oregon and ...

s in the area. In that year, 1,300 raptors were killed annually, among them 70 federally protected

golden eagle The golden eagle (''Aquila chrysaetos'') is a bird of prey living in the Northern Hemisphere. It is the most widely distributed species of eagle. Like all eagles, it belongs to the family Accipitridae. They are one of the best-known bird of pr ...

s. In total, 4,700 birds were killed annually. The effects of the Altamont Pass wind farm on wildlife were exacerbated by its proximity to bird migration routes, its craggy landscape ideal for birds of prey, and its predominantly outdated turbine designs (as of 2013). As of 2013 it takes 15-34 Altamont Pass turbines to produce the same amount of electricity as one modern turbine. These outdated turbines are set 60-80 feet tall, the same height as bird flight paths. Considered largely obsolete, these numerous small turbines are as of 2009 being gradually replaced with much larger and more cost-effective units. The larger units rotate at a much lower

angular frequency In physics, angular frequency (symbol ''ω''), also called angular speed and angular rate, is a scalar measure of the angle rate (the angle per unit time) or the temporal rate of change of the phase argument of a sinusoidal waveform or sine ...

to the previous turbines, and, being elevated higher, are less hazardous to the local wildlife, according to a report done for the

Bonneville Power Administration The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) is an American federal agency operating in the Pacific Northwest. BPA was created by an act of United States Congress, Congress in 1937 to market electric power from the Bonneville Dam located on the Col ...

. As of 2010, a settlement has been reached between the

Audubon Society The National Audubon Society (Audubon; ) is an American non-profit environmental organization dedicated to conservation of birds and their habitats. Located in the United States and incorporated in 1905, Audubon is one of the oldest of such orga ...

, Californians for Renewable Energy and NextEra Energy Resources, who operate some 5,000 turbines in the area. Nearly half of the smaller turbines will be replaced by newer, more bird-friendly models. The project was expected to be complete by 2015 and included $2.5 million for raptor habitat restoration.

Wind farms

The Altamont Pass Wind Farm is now composed of five constituent wind farms. The Golden Hills Wind Farm is the largest constituent wind farm, as well as being the only one located south of

Repowering

In 2015, NextEra – which owns some of the 100kW Kenetech/US Windpower older turbines installed during the 1980s – agreed to remove the machines and replace them with 48 new model wind turbines. A power purchase agreement has been completed to power the

Googleplex The Googleplex is the corporate headquarters complex of Google. It is located at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California. The original complex, with of office space, is the company's second largest square footage assemblage of ...

office complex in nearby Mountain View, California. The process of removing old wind turbines and replacing them with newer machines is called repowering. A portion of the wind energy center is being dismantled as of 2016. Altamont Winds Inc (AWI)'s 83MW of 100 kW Kenetech turbines are being taken down. These are older models with lattice towers. It has been proposed to replace them with 27 turbines with rated capacity of 2.1MW each (56.7MW total). The Scott Haggerty wind farm replaced 569 100-kW turbines with 23 modern turbines in 2021.

References

External links