The Power of Wind
For 15 years, PGE has been a regional leader in wind generation – one of Oregon’s newest forms of power production.
For 15 years, PGE has been a regional leader in wind generation – one of Oregon’s newest forms of power production.
Our wind fleet
Wind power offers unique benefits, including affordable emissions-free energy, family-wage jobs in rural areas and opportunities to support agriculture and local landowners.
In addition to long-term contracts with third-party providers, we source power from four wind facilities that we own in whole or in part:
Biglow Canyon – PGE owned, began operations in 2007
Tucannon River – PGE owned, began operations in 2014
Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility – co-owned with NextEra Energy Resources, wind portion operational in 2020
Clearwater Wind Energy Center – co-owned with NextEra Energy Resources, PGE’s portion operational in January 2024
Clearwater Wind Energy Center: harnessing power from Big Sky Country
This giant wind farm turns steady winds on the vast plains of Eastern Montana into reliable power here in Oregon.
Clearwater adds geographic diversity to our portfolio, allowing PGE to source renewable power when it's available from a variety of resource types and locations. That means more reliable power, without any emissions.
3 ways our wind farms are leading the way
Safety
Our team at Biglow Canyon has gone more than seven years without a lost-time injury.
Biglow was also the first wind farm in Oregon to be recognized by OSHA’s Safety & Health Achievement Recognition Program.
Innovation
We use remote diagnostics and predictive technologies to monitor the health of our equipment, allowing us to anticipate potential problems and prioritize maintenance tasks.
For this work, PGE was awarded the Electric Power Research Institute’s Technology Transfer Award for Wind Turbine Health Monitoring Tools – a national accolade honoring innovators transforming the future of energy.
Reliability and consistency
Our wind fleet is consistently available to deliver reliable, renewable energy to customers, with both an availability factor and forced outage rate above the industry median.
Additionally, our team at Biglow has a combined industry experience of more than 140 years.
A clean energy future powered by wind
We hear our customers loud and clear: they want cleaner, greener affordable energy. Wind power will continue to play an important role as we make progress toward our climate targets.
From pioneering plants like Biglow Canyon, to newer sites like our innovative Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility, wind farms are playing an increasingly important role in our energy portfolio.
One billion watts – all from wind
On a winter day in January 2024, PGE produced a maximum output of more than 1,000 MW of wind for the first time. That’s one gigawatt of wind energy.
Our new Clearwater Wind Energy Center in Montana played a big part. At the time of the milestone, Clearwater accounted for almost 30% of the total wind generation.
One gigawatt is enough energy to power the equivalent of about 830,000 homes – that’s half the number of homes in Oregon!
Graph: PGE’s weekly maximum wind generation from owned and contracted facilities, before and after Clearwater’s addition. (Source: Portland General Electric)
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Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility: Storing renewable energy for a rainy day
The wind and sun don't always cooperate when we want to use renewable energy. That's why we designed the Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility. A first-of-its-scale resource for renewable energy generation and storage, Wheatridge combines wind power generation, solar power generation, and battery storage in one location, so we can harvest and store renewable energy for use when the sun and wind aren't generating energy.