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BY ONELL R. SOTO | SDUT
APRIL 19, 2011 AT 4:33 P.M.

San Diego Gas & Electric said Tuesday that it has signed a deal with a sister company for power from a big wind farm to be built just south of the border starting next year.

The Energia Sierra Juarez project makes sense because it will produce power when it is most needed, said Jim Avery, who is in charge of making sure SDG&E has enough electricity to meet the region's needs.

"This will have a much better correlation with our system peak than any other wind regime in California," he said. "Our electric peak occurs when we have a Santa Ana wind. When we have a Santa Ana wind, the winds are coming right across this plateau."

He said the project meets requirements that it produce power at the "least cost, best fit" for the region.

SDG&E and other utilities are required by state law to increase the amount of renewable power they purchase to 33 percent by 2020. Last year, 11.9 percent of SDG&E's power was from such sources.

Wind projects east of San Diego have drawn opposition from critics who say they destroy unique environments and contribute to an industrialization of rural areas.

Avery said he expects that to continue with this contract.

"I don't know I've ever done a project that people don't complain about," he said.

The sister company, Sempra Generation, also announced that it is selling half of the project to BP Wind Energy, a subsidiary of energy giant BP.

It has similar partnerships with BP for wind farms in Indiana and Colorado.

The 20-year SDG&E contract is significant because it clears the way, economically, for construction of the first, 156-megawatt, phase of the wind farm.

Mexican government officials have issued a building permit for the wind farm, said Sempra Generation spokesman Scott Crider, but it is waiting for permission from the Mexican Energy Regulatory Commission to make and export the electricity.

The project is also awaiting approval from the U.S. Department of Energy for a cross-border power line, from San Diego County for three transmission towers and from state regulators for a new substation on the southeastern corner of the county.

"We anticipate having the project fully permitted by the end of 2011," Crider said.

Sempra Generation expects that project to eventually produce as much as 1,000 megawatts and line dozens of miles of ridgelines in Baja California, taking up a bigger area than the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

An earlier deal Sempra Generation had inked to sell wind power from Mexico to Southern California Edison collapsed due to delays in the construction of the Sunrise Powerlink, Avery said.

Although the project would tie into a different power line, the Southwest Powerlink, capacity for its power is dependent on Sunrise construction, he said.

This contract is the first between Sempra Generation and SDG&E, both of which are owned by Sempra Energy. It will require approval from the California Public Utilities Commission.

By state law, the two subsidiaries are operated independently. Because they are related, dealings between them are subject to special scrutiny.

For example, Sempra Generation bid for the power through a process in which other power producers were also competing, not through a one-to-one approach.

The companies' negotiations for this project were witnessed by an independent observer who reports to the PUC.

Also, SDG&E doesn't usually say how much it is paying for power, but Avery said it will pay about 12 cents a kilowatt-hour for this electricity, in the low end of how much it has agreed to pay for wind electricity.

Bill Powers, an engineer who favors building renewable projects closer to population centers, said that price is too high, citing state power price statistics.

"It looks like SDG&E will be paying too much for Sempra Baja wind power," he said.

But David Peck, an analyst with the PUC's Division of Ratepayer Advocates, said the price is competitive with what wind developers are now getting.

The corporate relationship between SDG&E and Sempra Generation will draw extra scrutiny, he said, but "we are hopefully that projects like the Energia Sierra Juarez project will get built to help meet the state's renewable goals."

Still, he added, as one of the first Mexican projects buitl to supply California's renewable requirements, "there may be unforseen hurdles that the developer will encounter along the way."

See the attached map below: The region's wind future

interesting, we need to go to another nation and again form a foreign coporation with outside BP assistance. Gee we cannot put it on US soil, because of costs and Enviromental Impacts, yet in a national emergency we could possibly have an issue. Gee sounds like a new Middle East crisis in the building? Oil again!

Yep, what part of "energy independence" do you suppose these yo-yo's don't understand?

Must say, it's a bit better than ERON... ya think...

The current "big picture" is that wind and solar are not competitive price-wise with gas and coal.

So. What to do? Certain forces behind the fossil fuel industry are fiercely fighting "green initiatives".

Anyone think that there wouldn't be a NATO operation in Libya, if Libya didn't have vast petroleum reserves?

Bottom line is that green energy is expensive. But, given what is currently happening with petroleum, it may just become a no-brainer.