EverPower
The Big Sky Wind Farm in Illinois is one of the operational projects owned by EverPower, the Pennsylvania company that will be building a huge wind farm near Bridger.
Site work on what is proposed to be the biggest wind farm in Montana is expected to start Thursday about 10 miles southeast of Bridger.
“That’s a huge project,” Carbon County Commissioner John Prinkki said. “It’s an exciting project.”
The proposed Mud Springs Wind Ranch Project would have 120 enormous turbines generating a total of 240 megawatts, about 30 megawatts more than the biggest existing project in the state, the Glacier Wind Farm near Shelby.
The project was put together by John Husar of Billings, the owner of Mud Springs Wind Development Inc., and the engineer on the project is Electrical Consultants Inc., also of Billings. Husar said all county, state and federal permits have been obtained. Brian Spangler, head of the Department of Environmental Quality’s renewable energy program, confirmed that DEQ assisted Husar with state permitting for the project.
“There’s nothing else standing in the way of this project,” Husar said, then added, “maybe the weather.”
The big partner in the $550 million project is EverPower, a Pittsburgh, Penn., company that already operates seven wind farms producing a total of 752 megawatts. Kevin Sheen, senior director of development and public relations for EverPower, said the company has another 20 projects in various stages of development, including the Bridger project, that should be producing about 1,000 megawatts within three years.
Husar said his son, John Jr., is also involved in the Bridger project and three other wind farms they are developing in Montana.
According to a description of the project filed with Carbon County, a new 230-kilovolt transmission line will run from the project to a point just over the state line in Park County, Wyo., where it will connect to an existing 230-kilovolt transmission line owned by PacifiCorp.
The project’s power is being sold to PacifiCorp under Public Utilities Regulatory Policy Act contracts. The project will consist of three separate 80-megawatt facilities, each with 40 wind turbines, and a commonly held power collection substation.
Each turbine will consist of a 328-foot-high steel tube tower supporting three 164-foot-long blades. By comparison, the 90 turbines near Judith Gap have 262-foot towers and 126-foot-long blades. On its website, EverPower said the project would have an annual carbon dioxide offset of about 489,754 tons of CO2.
Husar said the project is scheduled for completion by the end of 2016.
“We may have all this done by the end of 2015, depending on turbine availability,” he said.
This map from EverPower shows where the Mud Springs wind farm will be built south of Bridger, and the alignment of the wind turbines. The main road on the lower left is Highway 310.
Sheen said the work scheduled to start Thursday will involve site preparation, including road-building, excavating and foundation work. Construction was going to start in the spring, he said, but since the contractor has crews ready to go, they decided to get as much work as possible done this winter.
Husar said a general contractor is expected to be selected in February or March. Documents filed with Carbon County said a workforce of 95 to 120 people will be needed at peak construction, with most of them “sourced from the local area.” Eventually, six full-time employees will be needed to operate the wind farm.
News of the wind farm development comes just days after Energy Corporation of America announced it was stopping work at an experimental oil well near Belfry, citing unfavorable results. ECA’s plans to explore for oil and gas along the Beartooth Front drew strong opposition from environmentalists and residents, especially after ECA’s chief executive, John Mork, promised to bring Bakken-like development to the area.
Prinkki referenced the ECA’s exploratory work in noting how little publicity the Bridger wind farm has received so far.
“It’s ironic that we’re paying so much attention to something that’s not going to happen, and not paying attention to something that will,” he said.
Husar said the three separate 80-megawatt facilities and the energy hub will be separately owned by limited liability companies, in keeping with PURPA regulations. The LLCs will be the Mud Springs Wind Project, the Pryor Caves Wind Project, the Horse Thief Wind Project and the Bowler Flats Energy Hub.
The wind projects will be separated by at least one mile between the outermost wind turbine locations. Power generated by each turbine will be collected by underground power cables and transmitted to the hub station, which will encompass about five acres.
The project area consists of about 18,000 acres of land now used mostly for cattle grazing. Of that total, about 584 acres will be used for permanent facilities like turbine foundations, the substation, roads, pads and underground cables.
The project area is accessed by five roads, but most of the construction traffic is expected to pass through Bridger to Quarry Road and Railbed Road via Highway 310.
Husar, a graduate of Rocky Mountain College, has been in Montana since 1975. He said he worked in the seismic industry in the early 1980s, then got involved in energy conservation programs dealing with lighting.
His interest in wind power was sparked in 1995, when he was visiting his parents in Tehachapi, Calif., home to the Mustang Hills Wind Farm, which, coincidentally, was purchased by EverPower in 2012.
The first project he tried to develop, Husar said, was near Reed Point, starting in 2001. That project, which involved a wind developer from Germany, fell apart because of transmission issues involving NorthWestern Energy.
He tried putting together a project involving PacifiCorp that would have been on the Crow Reservation near Yellowtail Dam, he said, but PacifiCorp asked him to move the project after the energy company ran into problems negotiating a lease with the Crow Tribe.
He then moved the project to the Bowler Flat area, which he’d had his eye on since 2006 and which he called “a fabulous site” with promising wind potential. He worked with another Germany company and then an Irish company, but both of them dropped out for various reasons. The project lay dormant until early in 2012, when EverPower signed on as a partner.
There is no federal or state land involved in the project, only private land, Husar said. He said the “real heroes in this thing” are Rodney and Brent Crosby, sheep and cattle ranchers who signed the first leases on land in the project area.
Husar also said that while he is not required to do any mitigation to protect sage grouse, he is doing so voluntarily. He said he will be retrofitting stock watering troughs to prevent grouse from drowning and marking the top strand of every barbed-wire fence in the project area. Those top strands are the top killers of sage grouse, he said.
Besides being the biggest wind project in Montana, Husar said, “as a one-time build, it’s one of the biggest in the United States.”
