More wind turbine woes

(Click on image to enlarge. Copies available on request.)


Students and I attended the Dixmont Planning Board's Question and Answer session on wind power, where I had been asked to be a panel member and answer questions, presumably because of the work I do in Maine community wind assessment and wind power planning.

Students, particularly in our Environmental Policy and Sustainability design and Technology programs, need to prepare themselves for the day when they will be in the hot seat at meetings like this, which is why I made sure a few of them went. One student who went to the meeting is also a Dixmont resident.

Dixmont, with Jackson and Thorndike, is the locus for a wind power development proposal by Competitive Energy Services, a relatively small regional electrical generation and wind power development company. They are the company who developed the three-turbine installation at Beaver Ridge in Freedom, Maine. They are also a parent of Maine Renewable Energy LLC, which sells green power power attributes (RECs) through the Maine Interfaith Power and Light program.

The current Dixmont ordinance would most likely act to discourage any industrial wind power development in Dixmont, even a facility in which the Town would have an ownership stake.

I went to this meeting primarily to say that residents should consider a wind power project if the Town could get an equity ownership in one or more, or part of one, turbine, and so receive more than just tax revenue, but also revenue from selling power under LD 1075, the Maine community energy law, now Public Law Chapter 329. The revenues from even one turbine would be in excess of several hundred thousand dollars, while the tax revenue would be significant, but much less. I also went to argue for a smaller setback than the one-mile currently in the ordinance, but only if combined with a different noise regulation, an absolute standard of 40 dBA at occupied structures.

These ideas would permit some form of development to go ahead in Dixmont, and are a middle ground between what the developers want, which is more or less to be free to go ahead and put up as many turbines as they see fit, and what a group of local activists want, which is either no turbines, or, to put it in the best possible light, remarkably strict regulation of turbines.

I was able to say what I had to say, and I think it was heard by many folks in the audience, but I'm writing it down here again so that there is an independent record.

The meeting was much better facilitated than previous meetings in Jackson, with a moderator who took written questions from the audience. This provided for less of the contentious "he said/she said" back and forth that has mired such meetings recently.

It was still pretty clear that there were quite a few folks there who were not particularly interested in working the problem, if that meant that the proposal stood a chance of going forward, even in truncated or modified format. Even with the meeting format, there was still a considerable amount of rhetorical high jinks, particularly in the form of leading questions, and those in the audience who disagreed with the speaker, particularly with Andrew Price, the representative from CES, expressed themselves by pulling faces and not letting speakers finish points.

I found this behavior somewhat regrettable and pointed this out politely but directly. After I expressed myself so, which the moderator did not particularly wish me to do, another case of "positive thinking being neither", the incidence of face-pulling and interrupting did seem to go down a bit.

While the CES representative and others on the panel continued to defend the record of the Beaver Ridge wind farm, which I also found somewhat regrettable, when most folks in our area know that it is noisy and probably too close to a row of residences on Goosepecker Ridge Road and elsewhere.

At Unity College we definitely know that this development is noisy because quite a few of those houses on that road are owned by Unity College employees.

I pointed out that the development was too noisy, and used the opportunity to argue for the lower noise limit.

After about two and a half hours of back and forth, the meeting ended and we all went home to gather our wits and decompress and get ready for another workday.

I may be wrong, but didn't go away with the impression that the Planning Board was interested in changing the ordinance.

So this is where we are at in Jackson and Dixmont. The ordinances are written and although I don't know this for sure right now, both Planning Boards seem content to let them go forward with restrictive setbacks that the company argues would more or less prohibit development.

In neither case is it guaranteed that the laws will pass. In fact, I'd say that there's a fair likelihood of them not passing. I'd give them fifty-fifty, or 60-40 right now. Some voters will defer to the planning boards and vote yes, but others won't. Maine towns, particularly Jackson, have a history of rejecting planning restrictions.

While many townsfolk don't know or haven't heard that there are other options, especially the ownership option. The local activists against the wind project remain very active and continue to effectively polarize debate. I'm not sure if they mean to do this or not, but they are having this effect.

I suppose we'll have to put it to the voters at Town Meeting. It will be interesting to see what will happen.

One important new fact did emerge. Andrew Price, the CES representative, stated that the ongoing wind measurements at Mount Harris and Common Hill show that the Wind Power Density Class is "less than five." I take it to mean that the data is coming in at Class 4, for the straightforward reason that Class 3 is generally not profitable with the GE 1.5 machines proposed, and soon after CES found it was only Class Three, they'd very likely pull their project proposal.

However, the NREL wind maps (see image above) show only pockets of Class 4 on Mount Harris and none on Common Hill.

These two bits of data, taken together, suggest that only a proposal for turbines on the Dixmont section of the ridge would be forthcoming, the Jackson section having proved unprofitable or marginal. I doubt that the numbers are all in and crunched, especially connection costs, but if the top of Mount Harris is only Class 4, then the topography says that Common Hill is likely Class 3 and below par. Andrew Price alluded to this in some of his other statements and I picked up on it, although I don't think very many others did. The Jackson section is also furthest from the power lines where the power would have to connect to the grid, another nail in the coffin. In the final number crunching, turbines on Common Hill would have to "pay for" more connection that those on Mount Harris.

This is all a guess, of course, but I'm very familiar with the power curves and cost analysis for the GE 1.5 at this point. It's an educated guess.

His data also apparently confirm that the prevailing wind that is above the cut-in speed of a GE 1.5 comes out of the north west, meaning most of the sound from Mount Harris would finish up in the southeast, the least occupied area. The topography there is steep and concave, and there's a good chance the sound, captured by the laminar flow, would fly over the top of the nearest buildings around Drake Pond, which in any case are in Jackson Town and presumably not protected by the Dixmont ordinance.

Of course, this is also an educated guess. We'd have to see the data to know all this for sure, which CES is not prepared to let us do.

So my other main point was, unless the Towns get to see the data, we don't know where the noise will end up. I argued for a part of the law requiring permit applicants to provide data.

This is unpalatable to the companies, who think they will lose out to competition if they have to give their private data away, but I think that they have to pay the piper. I also think they also have to cooperate in helping plan for some Town equity in these projects.

I think it's a no-brainer for the towns. Whatever else you do, get the data.