Farm Would Reap Electricity From Wind : Tehachapi Firm Hopes to Harvest Energy on Rangeland at Gorman

A family that for more than a century has raised cattle on 3,000 acres of hilly rangeland in Gorman has leased its ranch to a company that plans to harvest energy from the area’s relentless winds.

If the county and public approve the project, by 1988 a 270-acre section of the ranch will sprout a $70-million forest of tall turbines, built and managed by Zond Systems, a Tehachapi-based company that is the nation’s second-largest developer of wind farms.

The project would be the first wind-powered electrical generation system in Los Angeles County, according to Southern California Edison, which has a contract with Zond to buy its electricity.

The ranch, owned by Ron Ralphs, was picked as an ideal site because it is isolated and swept by “extraordinary” winds, said Albert Davies, a Zond senior vice president. “We had been testing the wind energy levels in that area for some time,” he said. Winds averaged 17 m.p.h. year-round.

This is not the first time Zond has been attracted by the area’s winds. JoAnne Darcy, a senior deputy for county Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who represents the area, said that, a year ago, Zond presented a plan for a wind farm near Lancaster. But that project was strongly opposed by a group of Antelope Valley residents who feared that the turbines would ruin their views.

Although she would not speculate on prospects for the new plan, Darcy said it is much smaller than the previous proposal and would be on a more isolated tract.

Encompassing a broad expanse of rolling hills covered with sparse grass and dotted with a few wind-bent oaks, the ranch has been owned by the Ralphs family for 105 years.

“My granddad Oscar came up here in 1881,” Ron Ralphs said. “He bought this land from Jim Gorman,” who built the town of Gorman.

When his grandfather owned the ranch, glider pilots, including Charles Lindbergh, launched their craft from one of the hills to ride the wind, Ralphs said.

Ralphs said he decided to lease the land to take advantage of all of its resources, including the wind. Also, beef prices are depressed, reducing income from cattle ranching, he said. Only a few head of cattle now graze the land.

Zond has installed more than 1,900 turbines since 1981--near Tehachapi, Palm Springs and in Northern California.

The proposal for the Ralphs ranch project calls for 458 turbines, each resembling an enormous airplane propeller. The turbines, with blades spanning 82 feet, would pivot to face the wind atop towers ranging from 70 to 150 feet high.

Power Output Told

Davies said the turbines would annually produce 150-million kilowatt-hours of electricity, enough to supply 25,000 households.

With the Gorman project, Zond is trying to buck a dramatic downturn in the development of wind farms and other systems for reaping energy from renewable sources--the sun, water and heat deep in the Earth.

For more than 10 years, the harnessing of renewable energy was encouraged by federal and state tax credits through which an investor could deduct as much as 25% of the cost of a project from taxes. More than 13,300 turbines had been installed in California up to 1985, accounting for 95% of American wind-generating capacity, said Tom Gray, executive director of the Virginia-based American Wind Energy Assn., an industry lobby.

But the tax credits have been canceled and other tax advantages were lost with the passage of the new tax bill by Congress last summer, Gray said.

The wind power industry has also been plagued by a wildly fluctuating flow of investment dollars and balky technology. Only half the turbines installed operate reliably, Gray said.

Manufacturing Declines

One indicator of the shakeout in the wind power industry, he said, is a recent plunge in the number of companies building turbines--from 15 several years ago to two this year.

Despite the loss of the tax credits, Zond is attracting investors to the project, Davies said. Zond projects that the $70-million cost will be recovered in five to seven years.

Besides persuading investors to back the project, Zond must also persuade the public and county agencies that the turbines will not be an eyesore or have an adverse impact on the environment.

Zond is drafting an environmental impact statement for the county Regional Planning Department, said Lee Stark, director of the office’s impact analysis section. After a months-long review by specialists--from ecologists to engineers--public hearings will be held.

Key considerations, Stark said, are the potential for erosion when access roads are cut into the decomposing granite hills and any effect on a nearby area known for its wildflowers and wildlife.

Davies said the Gorman project, like Zond’s previous developments, is designed to have a minimal effect on the environment.

To Control Erosion

Erosion will be controlled by the reseeding of excavated areas, he said. Turbines will be built on a part of the ranch that is away from the “significant ecological area” noted by the county. None of the area’s oak trees will be disturbed. And, he said, although some of the turbines will be visible from the Golden State Freeway and California 138, the site is far from the nearest neighbor.

Davies said he does not expect the degree of opposition to this project that the company faced with its previous plan for a wind farm in the Sierra Pelona range near Lancaster.

The Lancaster site was different, he said. “There was much more public concern because that was a relatively populous area,” whereas Gorman “is much farther removed from any population and is far less visible,” he said.

Nonetheless, one county official, who requested anonymity, predicted that, even though the Gorman site is more isolated than the scuttled project near Lancaster, the project “will probably get a lot of the same opposition because people will see it as a foot in the door.”

Ron Ralphs said he would not get involved if he thought the environment would be degraded. “It’s clean energy,” Ralphs said. “It wouldn’t hurt the land a bit.”