Whitman farm harvests wind power

Last year, Whitman College entered into a partnership with FPL Energy of Florida to install energy-producing wind turbines on College-owned farm property. The resulting 261 megawatt wind farm is the largest farm of this kind in the West and makes Whitman College the only college in the country with wind turbines on its farm property.

Other area farmers and ranchers also are participants in the Stateline Wind Project, expected to help address some of the Pacific Northwest’s critical energy needs. Located southwest of Walla Walla, 450 windmills — 200-foot tall towers with rotors 200 feet across — make up the project. Sixty-five of the turbines are on Whitman land. All will be producing energy by the end of the year.

Energy from the windmills on the Whitman farm will be purchased by PacifiCorp, which operates as Pacific Power in Oregon, Washington, Wyoming and California and as Utah Power in Idaho and Utah.

President Tom Cronin, right, gives a tour of the wind turbine project to Washington state governor Gary Locke.

Gift establishes renewable energy lecture series

A $30,000 gift to Whitman College from FPL Energy of Florida and PacifiCorp will fund a three-year renewable energy lecture series at Whitman. The series, which began in October, will feature experts on renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and geothermal power. The College will bring nationally recognized scholars, scientists, and specialists to campus to present public lectures as well as talk to students in environmental studies courses and meet with faculty. In addition, a portion of the gift funds will support student thesis projects dealing with renewable energy.

The first speaker in the FPL Energy/PacifiCorp Renewable Energy Lecture Series was Robert Thayer, Jr., professor and former chair of the department of environmental design at the University of California, Davis, and the author of two books, Wind on the Land (1994) and LifePlace: Bioregional Planning and Practice (2002).