Kittery (Maine municipal) wind turbine pays dividends

[jpak]

http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20081223-BIZ-812230370

KITTERY, Maine — It used to be that the wind just blew scraps of paper and small plastic bags around at the Kittery Solid Waste Transfer Station. As residents dutifully sorted their cans and papers and plastics, they would comment to their neighbors, "Sure is windy up here."

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The first step was to install a wind anemometer to measure whether the transfer station's 100-foot hill had sufficient wind to justify the cost of installing a wind turbine. Data collection began in November 2006 and confirmed that the wind blew strongest during the winter months and that there should be enough wind to make a wind turbine economically viable.

The entire project shifted from wishful thinking to potential reality when a proposal requesting $50,000 to cover 25 percent of the cost and installation of a 50-kilowatt wind turbine, written by the Kittery Energy Advisory Committee, was funded by the Maine Renewable Resources Fund.

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The electricity produced by the wind turbine is sufficient to offset all of the electricity used at the transfer station and about one-quarter of electricity used at Shapleigh Middle School. Under Maine's "net annual metering" legislation, all of the electricity produced by the wind turbine over the course of a year can be subtracted from overall electricity use at the two facilities.

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