First Wind orders turbines

First Wind Tuesday purchased the turbines for its Palouse Wind wind farm currently under construction in northern Whitman County.

The company issued a news release Tuesday saying it had ordered 58 turbines from manufacturing firm Vestas for the Palouse Wind project. First Wind also purchased 19 turbines for its Bull Hill Wind project in Maine.

Palouse Wind has the county’s permission to install 65 turbines, but Ben Fairbanks, First Wind’s western regional business development manager, said the firm identified 58 locations as the best configuration for the Palouse Wind project.

“That’s the project at this point,” said Fairbanks. “We’ve chosen the 58 sites that maximize the wind resource we have there.”

The Vestas V100 machine produces 1.8 megawatts of electricity. The machine, according to a Vestas release, has a 100 meter rotor blade that can make as many as 16.6 revolutions per minute.

“It’s a more efficient machine. It works ideally in conditions like we have at the Palouse Wind site,” said Fairbanks.

Fairbanks said Vestas was chosen because it has a lot of machines operating in Washington state.

The Vestas release said the firm has had machines in Washington since 2001, and those machines currently produce 816 megawatts of electricity on wind farms in Columbia, Walla Walla and Kittitas counties.

Palouse Wind’s turbines will be manufactured at a plant in suburban Denver and will be delivered here by either truck or train by next June, when First Wind contractors will begin to put them up.

Fairbanks said price of the turbines is being kept confidential.

Crews are currently building access roads and pads for the turbines on Naff Ridge. Work began in mid-October.

Fairbanks said 45 workers are currently employed on the site, with contracted DeAtley rock crews bringing in semi truckloads of rock from a pit near Malden. Work on the roads and pads should be completed by Thanksgiving, he said.