Colstrip Power Plant operator and co-owner Talen Energy is eyeing a wind farm on the southeast Montana plains just outside the community where the coal-fired generator is located.
Documents obtained by The Billings Gazette show a targeted
project area of roughly 14 square miles in Rosebud and Treasure counties where
Talen Energy, in a joint venture with Pattern Energy, is pursuing lease
agreements for a wind farm of unspecified capacity.
Both companies have energy interests in Montana currently.
Talen has a 30% share of Colstrip Unit 3, a power plant facing increasing
pressure to close by late 2025. Pattern owns the 80-megawatt Stillwater Wind
Farm near Reed Point, which sells electricity to NorthWestern Energy.
The two businesses on April 13 announced a $2 billion
partnership to build 1,400 megawatts of utility-scale renewable energy projects
over the next five years. Details of where the projects would be located were
scant.
An answer sheet given to Montana landowners with a wind farm
lease offer states that construction of the wind farm would likely begin in
2024 and last about two years, though the lease allows a five-year window for
the project and construction is expected to last up to two years, depending on
how big the project is.
Talen wouldn’t agree to a phone interview for this article.
Calls were placed by The Gazette on March 29 and again April 16. Friday,
afternoon, Talen emailed the following statement clarifying that its wind farm
doesn’t change its position on Colstrip:
“Talen Energy and Pattern Energy are exploring the
development of a joint wind project in Montana. If it progresses, the project
would be separate from the operation of the Colstrip Steam Electric Station.
Talen Montana remains committed to the economic viability of Units 3 and 4.”
Wind power has taken a beating at the Montana Legislature
where there have been several bills intended to keep Colstrip Power Plant
operating beyond 2025. After that date, owners with Washington customers will
face the first of two coal power bans, the second arriving in Oregon in 2030.
Proponents of the power plant argue that wind and solar energy is too
intermittent.
But Talen, in courting landowners for wind farm leases, says
that wind has its benefits.
“No power plant operates 100% of the time. There are periods
when power plants shut down for maintenance and repairs and times when
resources run low or unexpected outages occur,” goes the Talen pitch. “At some
conventional power plants, the entire plant may have to be shut down for
repairs, whereas wind farm maintenance takes place one turbine at a time,
without having to shut down the entire plant.”
Colstrip Unit 4, for example, was shut down for all of
October 2020, for maintenance.
The talking points also firm up the point that multiple
resources feed power onto a grid in order to keep electricity flowing when one
source of power isn’t producing much, if any, electricity.
A look at property records for Talen’s described project
area shows other out-of-state companies as primary owners. WPP LLC is a
business that leases land for coal mines. WPP, which stands for “Western
Pocahontas Properties,” owns a substantial amount of the project area. The
Texas-based company does business as Natural Resource Partners, which states
that it “makes money from coal without getting its hands dirty” by leasing
property to coal producers. In financial reports, NRP lists Rosebud Mine as an
area where it does business.
Great Northern Properties, which holds the legacy coal acres
of BNSF Railroad and was instrumental in Southeast Montana’s failed Otter Creek
Coal mine, is another major landowner in the project area. Others include Booth
Land and Livestock Company, of Lucerne, Colorado, and PPL Montana.
Rosebud Mine is located outside the Talen Project area.
Talen Renewables Northwest states that it would use the
Colstrip Transmission Line to move electricity from its wind farm. The
500-kilovolt line is the energy highway between Colstrip, Washington and
Oregon.
However, Talen owns no transmission capacity on the Colstrip
line. It attempted to acquire line capacity from Puget Sound Energy in 2020,
but was unable to.
Talen wind turbines spinning in the foreground of the
Colstrip Power Plant wouldn’t be the company’s first renewable energy project
planned near a coal-fired generator.
In Montour County, Pennsylvania, where Talen will shutter a
1,500-megawatt coal-fired power plant in 2025, the company is building the
100-megawatt Solar One Project. Last November, Talen announced that it had
“committed to a strategic repositioning of its power generation fleet that will
eliminate the use of coal at all Talen wholly-owned facilities.” The plan was
developed through discussions with Sierra Club, according to Talen.
Talen and Pattern are corporate offspring of Riverstone
Holdings LLC, which in 2019 ahead of Talen’s pivot to renewables, began
de-emphasizing fossil fuel assets on its website, leading with wind power on
its homepage and “decarbonization,” plus the need to manage climate change
risks, in its explainer of who it is.
There is already a large wind energy project underway in
southeast Montana with plans to connect to the grid at Colstrip substation.
NextEra Energy Resources will plug into the grid at Colstrip
substation, to target markets in the Pacific Northwest. Its Clearwater Wind
project, with 750-megawatts capacity, will be three times larger than any wind
farm currently spinning in Montana. Construction on Clearwater is expected to
start this year, with the project spinning its first power in 2022.
There is currently 600 megawatts of available capacity on
the Colstrip line, which became available in January 2020 when Colstrip Units 1
and 2 were shut down, by owners Talen and Puget Sound Energy for being
uneconomical.
