GREAT FALLS
Florida-based wind farm company FPL Energy is prospecting along Montana's Rocky Mountain Front as it pursues its national goal of adding another 10,000 megawatts of wind power to its portfolio. "Montana is a potential new market for us," said company spokesman Steven Stengel of Juno Beach, Fla. "It's an area we are interested in." However, Stengel added that the company's progress in Montana is so far "barely tipping the scale" of early stage development. "It's going to be a long time before we would be in a position to be able to put anything on the ground, if ever," he said. James Carney, an FPL Energy land specialist based in Bend, Ore., met with landowners and elected officials in Teton and Pondera counties a month ago to gauge interest and look for available land. He said he hopes to secure lease agreements with landowners allowing the company to erect up to a dozen meteorological towers between Choteau and Dupuyer. Meteorological towers collect data on wind speed and other weather information. "My job is to get prospects so they can get a good selection of sites for testing of winds," Carney said. FPL Energy, a subsidiary of FPL Group, hopes to have meteorological towers up along the Front within the next 35 to 40 days, he said. A year-and-a-half to two years' worth of wind data from the towers would be needed before proceeding, Stengel said. And even if the wind resource satisfies the company, getting the power to market would remain an obstacle because the state's power lines are nearly full. "The transmission issue is a big issue, and we're trying to figure out how to solve that problem," Stengel said. Chantel McCormick, with the Montana Department of Commerce's energy development office, said Gov. Brian Schweitzer recruited FPL and met with company officials in fall 2006. She called news of the developer's interest in the state's wind resources encouraging. "This just goes to show what we've known all along: Montana leads the nation in wind-energy potential," she said. (AP)
