FEELING WINDED TURBINES IDLED BY LACK OF TRANSMISSION LINES.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

TEHACHAPI - As millions of Californians spent last week wondering whether their lights might blink off at any moment, Hal Romanowitz had 120 electricity-producing wind turbines sitting idle.

Romanowitz, president of Oak Creek Energy in Tehachapi, can't get a Southern California Edison contract to hook up the windmills because the utility lacks the transmission lines to carry their power.

``I've got 10 megawatts I can't turn on. It's terrible. It's criminal,'' Romanowitz said.

Ordered by the state government in the early 1980s to use renewable energy produced by private companies, Edison contracted with wind farms in Tehachapi and other alternative-energy companies to provide power.

But because Edison lacks the transmission lines to carry the turbines' peak power, it has been paying - exactly how much, neither the utility nor the companies will say - for energy it cannot use.

That means on windy days in spring and early summer, many of the 4,900 or so turbines lining mountain ridges visible from Highway 58 and Highway 14 turbines are turned off.

``It was always an embarrassment to us in the wind industry,'' said Paul Gipe, who was executive director of the Kern Wind Energy Association until 1995 and now is a writer and lecturer on wind energy. ``What's the point of putting up windmills if you can't use them?''

Until two years ago, Edison resisted improving the transmission lines, saying it was cheaper to buy power elsewhere. Ten years ago, two of the largest companies built their own 75-mile, 300-megawatt line running from Tehachapi to Edison lines south of Palmdale.

And since early last year, Edison has completed two projects to ease bottlenecks in the transmission system - one early in 2000 and the other just before Christmas - stringing higher-capacity wires and replacing equipment at substations.

``We are working diligently to try to fulfill our end of the contract,'' Edison spokeswoman Alis Clausen said.

Last year's work is expected to beef up Edison's transmission capacity by 40 megawatts, to 310 megawatts, though the winds have not been strong enough since late December to give it a full test. The wind companies say their turbines connected to Edison lines are actually under contract to produce 345 megawatts, but the utility doubts they will produce that much.

Overall, the Tehachapi wind farms can produce - though not necessarily transmit - 650 megawatts - enough for 650,000 homes, the wind energy association says.

Through the 1980s, Tehachapi was called the single largest and most productive wind energy area in the world, producing as much as much wind energy as the rest of the entire United States.

That changed during the 1990s with wind-farm construction booms in places like Iowa and Minnesota and India and Germany. Tehachapi's wind farms are not built like newer farms, which have bigger, more powerful turbines that are spaced farther apart.

``This isn't a wind-power plant that would be built today,'' said Mary McCann of Enron Wind, successor to Zond Systems, one of Tehachapi's original companies. ``It's basically like a history lesson. You come up here and there are all kinds of old machines.''

Tehachapi's wind farms have more than two dozen kinds of windmills, the wind energy association says. Most resemble airplane propellers atop steel towers, but there are several hundred that resemble giant eggbeaters.

The biggest is Enron's 1.5 megawatt turbine, mounted on a 208-foot-tall tower with a 112-foot diameter blade. It is taller than a 30-story building and able to produce as much power as two small power plants.

The oldest turbines produce about 65 kilowatts, though many of those have been replaced by new machines or simply disconnected.

The wind energy association says the turbines can operate profitably at 5 to 7 cents per kilowatt-hour - more than the 4 cents or so utilities could pay elsewhere in the mid-90s, but far less than the 30 cents-per-hour peak wholesale prices have hit over the last six months.

Edison pays the companies what is known as the ``avoided cost''- the cost of getting the energy elsewhere. Last year it paid 5 to 5.5 cents per kilowatt- hour, Romanowitz said. The year before, 4.5 cents per kilowatt.

In December and January, the rates went up to about 18 cents per kilowatt-hour, but the wind companies have not been paid for their November production or later. Edison announced last month it was suspending its payments for electricity.

Wind companies also say they've been told Edison will no longer pay for the wind power it doesn't have the transmission capacity to take.

The Tehachapi wind farms started with three companies: Oak Creek, Zond (now Enron) and Liberty Park (now Mogul). They were built because the California Public Utility Commission was implementing a law passed by Congress to encourage the use of ``renewable'' energy in the wake of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo.

In the beginning, the turbines were owned by individual investors, who bought them as tax shelters because of state and federal tax breaks meant to encourage wind energy.

``That was a method of raising the capital. They became the owners. The wind companies were the installers and the operators,'' said Bob Gates, Enron Wind Development Co. president, a wind-energy pioneer with Zond.

Those early tax breaks expired in the mid-1980s. They have since been revived in a different form, written so that businesses with large tax liabilities can benefit from them, experts say. The tax breaks also require selling electricity, unlike the 1980s laws that were based on investment.

``The owner is usually a financial institution,'' Gates said.

Romanowitz started out as one of Oak Creek's first investors in the 1980s.

When the company went bankrupt in 1988, Romanowitz - a systems engineer with a master's degree in business administration - developed a reorganization plan. Aside from a year's hiatus, he has run the company ever since.

While Oak Creek is a small company, with 15 employees and another 15 who work for service companies, giant corporations have entered the wind business.

Houston-based Enron is one of the world's largest integrated natural gas and electricity-producing companies. It bought wind pioneer Zond in 1997.

Florida Power and Light, doing business as FPL Energy, runs Tehachapi Turbines and has plans for another giant wind farm 10 miles away: 182 turbines in Jawbone Canyon.

Wind proponents say the industry is now in about its third generation of technology. Wind turbines are bigger and more powerful, take up less land, and are not as ugly. The industry has also learned better what spots get the best wind.

But they remain expensive in terms of the original capital investment, even according to advocates - about twice as much as in construction costs as for a natural gas-fired plant of the same capacity.

The advantage, however, is that the fuel is free.

``They have gas prices to pay for. We only have to worry about the wind,'' Romanowitz said. ``Wind is cheap and, it's perpetual.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos, map

Photo:

(1 -- color in AV edition only) Windmills like these in Mojave can generate electricity, but Southern California Edison hasn't been able to use it all because of a lack of transmission lines.

(2) Unlike this older model windmill, today's wind turbines are more powerful and bigger, require less land, and are not as ugly.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer

Map: Tehachapi