California: Wind Farms Retrospective - Wind Power for the World: The Rise of Modern Wind Energy - page 518

Knowing where to put up wind turbines gave California a highly
valuable benefit and clearly made a diference to other US states
who did less or no research on their wind resources [1, 2]. Thus
it was more risky and difficult to develop wind farms outside
California despite all the tax credits and incentives the other
states ofered.

23.2.2 1981-1985: The First Five Years

The very first wind farms were placed in three areas: The
Altamont Pass area in the north, the Tehachapi Pass north of Los
Angeles and the Boulevard Desert close to San Diego. The San
Gorgonio area, near the famous city of Palm Springs east of Los
Angeles became the third largest area but its development began
three years later. All of these areas were identified by the CEC as
having high potential compared to many other sites in the state
that were either left out for various reasons or developed much
later.
Wind turbines were first set up in 1981. In Altamont it was
Fayette

1 2

and US Windpower (USWP) ; in Tehachapi, Storm-

3

Master wind turbines were favoured and in the Boulevard Desert,

the four-bladed Butler

turbines made up the wind farm. The
range of these early wind turbines was from 40-56 kW.
In the first year, wind farms were generally quite small in the
beginning—totalling around 150 units in the whole state. While
USWP both acted as producer and operator of wind turbines and
sold the electricity to the utilities, others, like Windpower Systems,
only delivered their machines to their customers (such as Zond
Systems in Tehachapi).
The American concept featuring a lightweight construction,
passive yawing and high rotation speeds was very popular at

4

1

Fayette was a company from Pennsylvania established in 1978. Fayette quickly
became one of the biggest manufacturers and operators by 1985 with some
1600 units deployed in Altamont.

2

USWP was the largest US manufacturer/operator with ca. 4200 units in
California by 1992.

3

Windpower Systems was a company based in San Diego. Its StormMaster
turbine was known for its slender blades but often failed catastrophically due
to their extreme light-weight construction.

4

Butler was a company that produced a wind turbine designed by Terry Merkham,
an industry pioneer of the 1970s.