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NATIONAL WIND
COORDINATING COMMITTEE

HIGHLIGHTS

December 1, 2005

DATES TO REMEMBER
2006 NWCC Call Schedule: Conference calls for the workgroups, steering committee, and transmission updates (formerly RTO update) have been scheduled. The complete list of dates and times is available online. Keep in mind that dates may be rescheduled as scheduling conflicts arise. Rescheduled calls will be noted here in the Bi-weekly Update.

Technical Considerations in Siting Wind Energy Research Meeting. Last week, the NWCC hosted a technical meeting on existing research, methods, and tools available to address non-wildlife related technical issues associated with siting and operation of wind energy systems. Proceedings from this meeting are under development and speaker presentations are currently available online.

Attention Steering Committee Members - The next steering committee call has been rescheduled for Wednesday, Dec 21, 3 pm ET. Please update your calendars to reflect this change in date and time.

NWCC CONFERENCE CALLS

Transmission Update Call
December 13 @ 1:00 pm ET

Siting Workgroup Call
December 21 @ 2:00 pm ET

Steering Committee
December 21 @ 3:00 pm ET

MAGIC MOMENTS

Updated Calendar of 2005 Events: click here

NWCC STAFF CONTACTS

Katie Kalinowski
Outreach Associate
(202) 965-6383
kkalinowski@resolv.org

Madeleine West
Research Fellow
(202) 965-6216
mwest@resolv.org

NWCC WORKGROUP UPDATES
Wildlife:

Recent Wildlife Workgroup subgroup activities include:

Grassland/Shrub Steppe Species - December 5th is the deadline for responses to the prairie chicken RFQ. Quotations received will be passed on to the GS3 Subgroup. A conference call is being scheduled to determine next steps with the prairie chicken project.

GS3 Subgroup members began coordinating with members of the Ornithological Council team who are writing a literature review on avian grassland/shrub steppe species and wind projects.

Comments on the grassland songbirds monitoring protocol have been provided to the protocol authors for their review.

Operating protocols for this subgroup have been drafted and are being revised based on member comments.

Risk Assessment - Final edits are being incorporated into the subgroup’s draft white paper describing ecological risk assessment and its potential application to wind power. A conference call or meeting will be convened to present the white paper to the Wildlife Workgroup and the workgroup will decide how and whether it wishes to proceed in this area.

Nocturnal Methods and Metrics - One letter of interest was received from a 9-person team headed by Dr. Tom Kunz, Boston University, to write a companion document to the NWCC publication Studying Wind Energy/Bird Interactions: A Guidance Document. The subgroup has asked the Kunz team to provide a work plan that they will review on a subgroup call, date tbd – please contact kkalinowski@resolv.org for more information.

Planning is underway for the 6th NWCC Wildlife-Wind Research Meeting, proposed for October 2006. Suggestions on meeting topics and location are encouraged; please send these ideas to Katie Kalinowski at kkalinowski@resolv.org.

The next Wildlife Workgroup call will be in December; a scheduling form is due out shortly.
Siting:

Draft copies of the state-by-state siting factsheets were distributed at NWCC Business Meeting 36 on Nov 30. The factsheets will be distributed to the Siting Workgroup for comment, then submitted to the steering committee for approval as a NWCC resource document. For information about this project, please contact Madeleine West at mwest@resolv.org.

On Dec 1-2, NWCC hosted a workshop in Washington, DC on technical considerations for siting wind facilities. Panels on sound, visual, safety, communications interference, and other non-wildlife siting factors associated with wind development were featured. Speaker presentations are online and proceedings are under development.
Transmission:

The December/January Transmission Update call is scheduled for Tuesday, December 13, 1 pm ET. This update will focus on current events in the upper Midwest. The call reminder will have additional details about speakers for the update call.

The meeting summary for NWCC’s “Wind Energy and Transmission in the Southwest Power Pool” workshop, held September 19th in Topeka, Kansas, is being verified with the speakers. The summary will be distributed to attendees and posted on the NWCC website as soon as approval is received. Presentations and other meeting materials are already available at the above link.
Issue Forum: Air Quality and Wind Energy

45 people took part in NWCC’s first webcast of an issue forum, in addition to 25 participants in Lansing, MI. Presentations from this meeting on the relationship between wind energy and air quality are available online, and an issue brief on this topic is being verified with presenters before being distributed.