Cattle graze below wind mills on Cowley Ridge near Cowley, Alberta. (Patrick Price - Vancouver Sun)

PRINCE RUPERT, B.C. -- A Swiss company is hoping to build one of the world's biggest power-generating wind farms near this northcoast B.C. city.

Prime Minister Jean Chretien was on hand Tuesday for a ceremonial contract signing in Berlin with Swiss-based ABB, which submitted a joint development application with another company, Uniterre Resources Ltd., to federal and provincial government officials last Friday.

There will have to be a feasibility study first, but test sites could be running by this summer, said North Coast MLA Bill Belsey.

"It is major,'' said Belsey, who is confident the project will proceed.

A four-year construction phase would provide about 1000 jobs for four years, 500 of them local, said Don Allan, manager of the Prince Rupert Economic Development Commission.

There could be as many as 3,000 spinoff jobs in the service industry, he added.

The proposed farm site is near the Queen Charlotte Islands, roughly 100 kilometres east of Prince Rupert.

Wind conditions at the site average 8.6 metres a second, or 31 kilometres an hour. When completed, the project will be the largest wind farm in Canada and will likely expand this country's installed wind power energy by 350 percent

A high-voltage cable will connect the wind farm with a B.C. Hydro grid at a substation east of Prince Rupert.

Belsey said a plant could be constructed in Prince Rupert to build blades for the wind turbines.

It would be good news for the city's local economy, which floundered after declines in the forest industry and fisheries in recent years.