Wind towers expected Friday

The first of 58 towers for First Wind’s $170 million Palouse Wind power farm is slated to be erected Friday, as tower parts come in from Colorado.

Ben Fairbanks, western region business development manager for First Wind, said three turbines were sitting in Pasco at press time waiting for superload permits from the state Department of Transportation to make the trip to the Naff Ridge wind farm.

Workers on site said they anticipate putting one tower up shortly after it is received Friday.

From Pasco, the components of the Vestas V100 turbines will be trucked up Highway 395 to Highway 26, past Washtucna to Colfax where they will move north up Highway 195 to the wind farm site.

A 300-foot crane was in place Tuesday where the first tower will be erected, just to the east of Highway 195 south of the project’s Baird Road headquarters.

Crews removed a portion of the highway guard rail Saturday and widened the Baird Road intersection to allow the tower-toting trucks to make the turn off the highway.

Delivery of the tower pieces was initially expected Monday, but the company had not received final approval of its superload permit from the state Department of Transportation. Currently, those first tower segments are in Hermiston, waiting for permission to use Washington state highways.

The towers are shipped in three segments, with each piece being hauled by a single truck, meaning nine trucks will be used to deliver the first three towers Friday. The towers will stand as tall as 492 feet.

After the initial shipment, one full tower is expected to be delivered from Pasco each day beginning July 12.

Fairbanks said shipment of the towers was delayed a bit by the wildfires that have engulfed Colorado.

Andrew Longteig with Vestas said the company’s plant in Pueblo, Colo., was not touched by the fires, but the segments for the first three towers had to be trucked because the fires shut down the railroad.

Despite the delay, Fairbanks said the wind farm is still on schedule to begin producing power by the end of the year. Avista has agreed to buy about 40 average megawatts of electricity and as much as 100 megawatts from the Palouse Wind project.

Each turbine has the capacity to produce 1.8 megawatts of electricity. The rotor blades can make as many as 16.6 revolutions per minute.

Most of the components for the Palouse Wind towers will be manufactured at Vestas plants in Colorado and will be shipped to Pasco via rail. They will then be trucked to Naff Ridge.

Blades for the turbines will begin arriving in August.

“The blades are just about useless unless you have the tower and the naselle and the hub in place,” said Fairbanks.

The blades will be off-loaded at Vancouver before being delivered here.