A $130.0 million Nevada test site wind power project has been canceled after US Air Force officials said turbine blades atop Shoshone Mountain would disrupt radar signals during training exercises. The decision by the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency that operates the test site for the US Department of Energy (DOE, Washington, DC), halted the project during the final stage of the project's approval process.
Since the project's inception in 2000, more than $4.0 million in private corporate money has been spent on engineering, planning and collecting wind data. Plans called for installing 300 wind turbines on 264ft tall towers on Shoshone Mountain in three phases. The first 55 turbines would have had a capacity to generate 85MW of electricity. After the completion of the second and third phases, the wind farm's capacity would have increased to 375MW, enough to power a city with a population of 375,000.
Companies associated with the wind farm project include NEG Micon (Denmark), its development company Global Renewable Energy Partners Siemens and BP Capital. The companies still intend to begin construction on the Table Mountain Wind Project south of Las Vegas.
