Shepherds Flat sails ahead

The Shepherds Flat project is expected to include 338 GE turbines. Photo: John Womack.

An Oregon project being touted as the world’s largest wind farm got a big push this week in the form of a finalized $1.3 billion federal loan guarantee.

The 845-megawatt Shepherds Flat project is being developed by New York-based Caithness Energy in Gilliam and Morrow counties in northeastern Oregon. With a 20-year contract to deliver electricity and renewable energy credits to Southern California Edison, the project is expected to start generating power in 2012.

Shepherds Flat is also expected to create about 400 construction jobs and 35 permanent positions in a state where the unemployment rate has hovered above 10 percent for more than a year.

"State policies coupled with investments from the federal government, local governments, private sector partners and landowners created the environment in which we are able to create new jobs, new clean forms of energy, and new opportunities,” Gov. Ted Kulongoski said in a statement.

Funded by more than two-dozen institutional investors, the Shepherds Flat project is one of 16 renewable energy projects to receive loan guarantees, or commitments for guarantees, from the Department of Energy to date.