January 13, 2012
Massachusetts

Turbine at Lightolier headquarters will beginning spinning soon

By Grant Welker, Herald News Staff Reporter, www.heraldnews.com 13 January 2012

FALL RIVER – The massive new wind turbine at Lightolier’s headquarters in the Industrial Park will start working soon, once the system is connected to the power grid, according to a company spokeswoman.

The 415-foot turbine was constructed starting last fall and has been up for roughly a month. Its blades should start spinning and producing energy in the next few weeks, Lightolier spokeswoman Silvie Casanova said. Construction of poles to carry wires from the turbine to the power grid should start next week, she said.

National Grid spokesman David Graves confirmed that the turbine still needs to be connected to the grid and that construction of the poles and wires had not been done earlier because the company hadn’t received payment from Lightolier until last week. Third-party testing of the grid connection also needs to be done before the turbine can start producing energy, he said.

Lightolier has scheduled a ceremony for Jan. 31 featuring Gov. Deval Patrick and Zia Eftekhar, the chief executive officer of Philips Lighting North America, the parent company of Lightolier, and officials from the state agency Massachusetts Clean Energy Center.

The turbine, said to be the tallest in Massachusetts when it was built, is expected to produce enough power to offset 60 percent of the plant’s energy usage. It will only work when wind is above 7 mph, Casanova said.


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/01/13/turbine-at-lightolier-headquarters-will-beginning-spinning-soon/