Energy group hopes to accelerate turbine plan
ORLEANS — A municipal wind turbine in the watershed won’t only be green, it will generate some green.
A report from Weston and Sampson, the town’s consultant, shows a small town-owned wind turbine in the watershed would offset about $70,000 a year in energy costs. Moreover, said Allen Kolchinsky, member of the renewable energy/wind committee, the town could receive $400,000 in grants that would help offset the cost of the turbine, which is estimated at $2.3 million.
The news is so good that Kolchinsky’s committee hopes the board of selectmen will consider moving the project up on the capital plan. The turbine can be delivered in six to eight months, so the committee is hoping the timetable of having the turbine up and running by the summer of 2012 can be shortened.
The committee is also looking at possibilities available to the town if it joins the Cape and Vineyard Electric Cooperative. The cooperative, an offshoot of the county’s Cape Light Compact, is designed to take the financial risk and operating responsibility of turbines away from towns. The cooperative would buy the turbines and make a lease payment to the host town, which would get a portion of the electricity to run a town facility, a water treatment plant for instance.
Orleans can join the cooperative and have a municipal turbine in the watershed. Co-op turbines, if supported, could be placed in six or so appropriate sites in town. Solar panels on town buildings are also a possibility, said Kolchinsky.
“We can have our cake and eat it too,” he said.
Selectmen are looking forward to hearing a more complete report in June,
“I think your proposals are dynamite,” said Selectman Mark Carron, adding that he would be willing to move the turbine up in the capital plan.
The idea of placing wind turbines in the watershed has a long history. Town meeting voted for the idea on at least two occasions and an earlier wind energy committee had done quite a bit of work on a proposal to put two wind turbines on the town parcel. The plan for those turbines, which would have been owned by a private entity, fell apart last year because of financial and other considerations.
The town didn’t give up on the idea and it seems the faith of residents and officials has been born out.
Kolchinsky told selectmen the single turbine provided almost as great a return as the two turbines that were originally proposed, which were much bigger – 1.6 megawatts compared to 600 kilowatts.
The reason for this, he said, is because of the state’s new Green Communities Act, which enables net metering. Net metering allows towns to be credited for electricity at retail rather than wholesale rates.
By Doreen Leggett
27 March 2009
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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