Wind Brings Jobs to Valley

The Valley region is feeling strong winds of opportunity – in the wind industry, that is. An estimated 2,000 jobs in the Antelope Valley have been created in the past two years due to growth in the wind industry, said Lorelei Oviatt, Kern County’s director of planning and community development. “Many of the tradespeople in residential and commercial construction can take those kinds of skills into the wind production,” field, Oviatt said. Landing a job can take time, years even, because the regulatory process for approving wind projects is lengthy and rigorous. But new wind projects are in the pipeline and will create more demand going forward, industry officials say. “Funding wise, we are seeing capital investment, so the availability of jobs is definitely growing,” said Robin Fleming, senior manager and business developer for Kern County Economic Development Corporation. Google Inc. and CitiBank each recently made a $55 million investment into the Alta Wind Energy Center project, located in the mountains of the Tehachapi Pass. Having such a high-profile project in the Valley region will only help boost local opportunity for jobs, those familiar with the project say. The Alta IV project, which is only one of the seven Alta Wind Energy Center projects, will supply power to utility Southern California Edison, according to Jennifer Geeslin, spokeswoman for Alta Wind Energy Center. The completion of the projects will bring the total capacity of the center to 1,020 megawatts, making it the nation’s first gigawatt-scale wind energy facility. “It’s very exciting for us to have these projects,” said Geeslin. In the early 1980s, California’s wind industry was booming and Tehachapi was helping the state to set its pace in developing opportunities in alternative energy. As time wore on, the state lagged behind other states, such as Texas and Iowa. Today, Tehachapi is home to many wind farms and thousands of turbines, which together comprise the Tehachapi Wind Resource Center. Southern California Edison is working on one of the largest wind projects in the state in Tehachapi. Once complete, the utility’s Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project will include a series of new and upgraded high-voltage transmission lines capable of delivering 4,500 megawatts of electricity from wind farms and other generating companies in Northern Los Angeles and Eastern Kern counties. That’s enough to power three million homes at peak output. The project is slated to be complete by 2014. Job training Several job-training programs have emerged to support the projects that are underway in the Tehachapi area. For example, Kern County’s Employers’ Training Resource has partnered with Kern Community College in providing wind technician training programs. Many of the participants have been laid off from other jobs and want to enter into a new job field, said Cheryl Billington, ETR’s program specialist. “We have the money to help retrain dislocated workers in a new industry with new skills,” Billington said. Airstreams Renewables Inc. in Tehachapi offers an instructor-led program for wind turbine technicians. The course includes a 20-day curriculum for entry-level students and related safety courses. According to the company’s site, an entry-level wind technician can earn up to $20 per hour and a high-level wind technician can earn up to $28 per hour. Skilled workers with experience in other industries also can help to support the wind industry, Oviatt said. Those include construction workers, crane operators and electricians. “Turbines come in components that have to be broken down and then brought in on flat bed trailers, so we even have specialty truckers,” Oviatt said. But snagging a job in the wind industry can be challenging, industry officials say. Wind projects must clear several hurdles before getting off the ground. Some students finish their wind training programs and then discover it can take about two to four years for a project to start, said Linda Parker, executive director of the Kern Wind Energy Association. “It makes it shaky,” she said. If students aren’t able to immediately find a job in the wind industry, most can find another position in the green industry, Billington said.