Lompoc Wind Farm Expects to Start Up This Month

The fits and starts for a wind energy project in the hills southwest of Lompoc arrived at an unexpected finish line when current operator BayWa obtained a letter from U.S. Fish & Wildlife on September 25 stating that the agency expected to issue a golden eagle take authorization to the Strauss Wind Energy Project by next March.

The death of eagles at the project site is expected among the 27 or so wind turbines standing 267 feet tall with blades the wingspan of a 747 jumbo jet, as the San Miguelito hills are known habitat for the federally protected species. In dealing with situations such as this, U.S. Fish & Wildlife may extend a permit under the federal Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act to set rules to protect the eagles, a process that was expected to take one to three years. Instead, “extenuating circumstances” prompted the federal agency to expedite its permit process. Already, the project operator BayWa was cooperating with Fish & Wildlife to add “refinements and proposed actions” to the application, placing the applicant “on a trajectory toward receiving an ETP” — Eagle Take Permit — “barring unforeseen circumstances,” the letter stated.

Because the one- to three-year permit process would have delayed the startup of the clean energy source, the County Planning Commission had written findings that emulated the federal take rules as conditions for BayWa to follow. The company was allowed to proceed with the project as long as it was pursuing the federal application. The Coalition for Labor, Agriculture, and Business challenged that work-around, with the appeal set to be heard before the Board of Supervisors this morning.

Instead, the arrival of the letter from Fish & Wildlife reset the clock, in a sense. The letter had been a condition in the original project, which had been approved back in January 2020. As the revised condition was withdrawn, so was the basis for the appeal.

The project’s turbines and blades, which traveled through the streets of Lompoc two years ago for a project in the works since 2001, will finally begin to spin in earnest this month, BayWa CEO Gordon MacDougall told the supervisors on Tuesday morning. The turbines are expected to produce 98 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 43,000 homes. 

“We still have a number of things to do,” MacDougall said. “We’re very keen to be delivering our wind farm that the whole County of Santa Barbara can be proud of.”

Correction: This story was corrected to state the wind farm is southwest of Lompoc, not to the east.