Video: Portsmouth Wind Turbine Economics

By John McDaid | Thursday, 11 October 2007

Cut together some of Portsmouth Economic Development Committee member Gary Gump's explanation with the revenue chart to help make clear just how much money this will save the town.


Tags: 
Localblogging, 02871, WTG

Comments

buckaroo banzai

Thu, 10/11/2007 - 10:13pm

All well and good if you make the policy decision to turn the Portsmouth Middle School property into an industrial power generation site for the expressed purpose of making $$$$! I grant that every kW generated by wind is a kW that is not generated by a coal-fired monster, and that is a very good thing regardless of where the power is consumed. But.... look at the charts in the study. Only 23% of the energy generated by the turbine is used on-site. The remaining 77% is sold back to the power company. The only way the project works is if we choose the larger turbine and make the conscious decision to morph the project from a way to offset a portion of the Town's utility bills into a project to generate $$$ to put into the general fund. As I said, all well and good as long as we know what kind of decision we are making here, and not just fooling ourselves into thinking that we are somehow being green! We are deciding whether we want to turn the Middle School into a power station in order to lower property taxes, pure and simple. Fine with me as long as we are all on the same page.
I invite anyone to drive over to the Abbey, stand in the middle of the parking lot, gaze up at the turbine, think 60% bigger, and then drive down to the Middle School, drive around to the back, put your back up against the back wall of the building, gaze westward and imagine that 60% larger turbine right over there at the edge of the grass. Even if you put it further away in center field of the upper ball field, as was suggested, it does not get any better. See for yourself, put in the effort, go out and do the leg work, stand on the ground, use your imagination, and then come back tell me you think this is a good thing.
Full disclosure: I go over to the Abbey once a week and just stare in awe. I am a hugh supporter of the Abbey turbine, been up in it, know how it works, know the economics of the situation, love the swooshing sound, and think of it as a true work of art. Our future is bleak indeed without more of them,
But.....
BB

John McDaid

Sat, 10/13/2007 - 7:41am

Howdy, Buckaroo...
"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."
— John Kenneth Galbraith

You do raise good points, and I thank you for your thoughtful and concerned response. Yes, a 1.5mW unit is bigger, and while I haven't physically gone to the Middle School as you suggest, I have tried to visualize this based on specs from the GE product literature. I'm pretty much a noob at model-building in Google Earth, but I hacked this together (requires Google Earth application).

There are a lot of things I wish. I wish we had net metering in RI, so the Town could offset ALL our electrical costs. I wish we had an unlimited time horizon on the zero-interest bond, so we could wait for a 1.2mW with the right efficiency blades to be available in the US. I wish we didn't have the Paiva-Weed noose tightening around our necks. Most puzzlingly, I wish a wind turbine could continue to power the school even in the event of an outage on the grid, which would seem to be a no-brainer of a feature.

But, unfortunately, we don't live in one of those alternate realities. We live here in the universe next door, where our schools are woefully underfunded (do you know there are 386s with floppy drives in our classrooms? I won't even get into the textbooks that don't mention the fall of the Soviet Union) and Fat Larry and his Whole Sick Crew are ready to stand at the podium, pounding their shoes like Khruschev at the slightest hint of spending beyond the BEP.

My son will be a student at the Middle School before all that long, and I actually think having a turbine there will provide some interesting teaching opportunities. Not just for technology, but, as you say, an early introduction to the political and economic realities of American education funding. So despite the size, and your legitimate points about hosting this on school property, I still believe this will be beneficial both financially and educationally.

Cheers.
-j

AndrewKatzman

Fri, 10/12/2007 - 7:57pm

hmmm, lemme think here..... who else would make the idiotic mistake of reading something upside down.....

http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee314/backdoorangel/bushbook.jpg

John McDaid

Sat, 10/13/2007 - 7:18am

Hi, Andrew...
Too funny. Maybe the Tailgunner was really letting her freak flag fly:
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/jimi+hendrix/if+6+was+9_20071549.html

Errr, on second thought...

A picture is worth a thousand words, and I hope this clip saves a million words of explanation for anyone who might consider voting for Gleason again.

Cheers.
-j