CORRECTION

A report about wind power in the Business section Friday reported the wrong power output for a wind turbine farm under consideration. If the turbines are built in the northwestern corner of the state, they would produce enough electricity to serve 12,500 to 15,000 homes.

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If Richard Calhoun gets his wish, Big Springs Mountain would sprout two dozen wind turbines rising nearly 300 feet into the sky in one of the windiest pieces of real estate in the state.

Erected at an altitude of 4,000 feet, the powerful turbines would generate enough electricity to serve 12,500 to 15,000 homes. It would be a substantial wind farm by any measure, on a scale unheard of in North Carolina.

Calhoun is a family doctor, Christmas tree farmer and Ashe County commissioner who owns the mountain in the northwest corner of the state and wants to use his property to promote clean energy. In the process, he'd like to make a profit by selling the electricity to Blue Ridge Electric Membership Corp.

Calhoun expects to file his application in about two months with the N.C. Utilities Commission. The state agency must approve any project that will sell most of its electricity for public use.

"We have some of the highest average wind speeds in all the United States, over 20 mph on some of the highest ridges," said Dennis Scanlin, a technology professor at Appalachian State University who has been advising Calhoun. "The wind resources in Western North Carolina are outstanding and suitable for a utility-scale wind project."

Despite the abundance of a free natural resource, wind power has proven a hard sell in North Carolina.

Electricity here is cheap, making alternatives such as wind impractical. The state doesn't require utilities to use alternative energy, so operators have problems getting financial backing for products without a guaranteed market. And unlike the Midwest's high-wind regions in cornfields and other remote areas, North Carolina's best areas for wind happen to be in environmentally sensitive spots.

"The problems in North Carolina are the additional difficulty of developing the resources on the coast and in our mountains," said utilities commissioner Jim Kerr.

The state has a handful of small, experimental or private wind turbines, but nothing approaching commercial-scale wind utilities. A demonstration project at N.C. State University in Raleigh produces 1 kilowatt of electricity. Calhoun's wind turbines, by contrast, would be 2,000 times more powerful, generating 2 megawatts each. His wind farm would generate 50 megawatts.

Top alternate option

Wind power is now the leading alternative energy source in the nation. In some states, it produces electricity more cheaply than natural-gas power plants.

But Progress Energy and Duke Power use few natural-gas plants and make electricity cheaply with nuclear and coal plants. States with wind farms generally subsidize alternative energy with surcharges on customers' bills.

But energy prices are rising. The cost of generating wind power is dropping. And wind turbines are gaining general acceptance.

Now that the state's two Fortune 500 utilities want to build new nuclear reactors, wind advocates are hoping the climate here will change. Environmental groups are pressing state officials to require Progress Energy and Duke Power to commit to more renewable energy before spending several billion dollars on a new nuclear plant.

Less than 2 percent of North Carolina's electricity comes from alternative sources. About two dozen states have a minimum requirement, usually 10 percent, that has created a market for wind farms and other renewable energy.

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