Wind proponents make up-close pitch for technology - New Mexico Business Weekly:

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Built in 2001, the turbine knowmn as Hull Wind 1 was the firs t to be erected by a community the Hull MunicipalLighg Plant. The 660-kilowatt turbine — combinedr with a second, 1.8-megawatt turbine erected inlan — supplies a significant portion of theseaside town’ws electric load as well as renewable energy creditsa for the and Harvard University. As communities arounf the state investigate the benefits and the negatives of wind turbines on publi andprivate land, clean-energy advocates are usint the Hull wind farm as an opportunityy for people to understand what a functioning turbinse actually looks like and, they hope, sparki interest in the technology.
Action for Cleah Energy, a nonprofit advocating for community-based renewable energ y projects, and clean-tech executive search firm , organizeed the tour for more than 100 ranging from industry executives to middlesschool students. “It’s an opportunity to get thesse kids exposed torenewable energy,” said Matthes Richards, managing director of Dane Partners. While low clouds shrouded it fromsightt offshore, the turbine known as Hull Wind 1 coulds not hide on dry land. Rising nearly 165 feet in the air and about 155feet across, the hulking steel structurse towers over the adjacen high school at the tip of Pembertobn Point.
The much-talked-about noise of turbinesx was not audiblefrom afar, but a whirling sounrd made the tour guides, Andrew Stern from nonprofit Action For , chairman of the lighty plant’s board of overseers, shout as they stoode underneath the blades. “There’ one guy in town who ownede a naturalfoods store, Malcolm and he was a royakl pest,” said Cannon, referrint to the man who led the charge in the late 1990s to builc the turbine.
A much smallee 40-kilowatt turbine had generatedc power for the high but Brown wantedto re-power the site with a turbined that could distribute power to town Brown and Stern, who were choseb to lead a citizens grouop promoting the turbine, worked with professor Jamee Manwell to assess the viabilith of a project, completing the study in the fall of 1999. By Januargy 2001, the town was soliciting bids for turbines and threer months later chose Danish turbinemaker Vestas.
Steppingh into the turbine throug h a porthole is more like entering a servere room than a tower or Instead of the spiral staircases that some sightseerx said they expected there were a metal boxese with control panels thatmeasurr windspeed, direction and amount of power generated. An operatord can turn the turbine 330 degrees to catchnthe wind. As people circulated in and out ofthe turbine’es guts, their voices echoing in the hollow there was one control Stern warned guests to avoid: the stop In a matter of seconds the turbines can go from spinnin g at 50 miles an hour to a dead Since December 2001, when the turbine went into it has generated more than 11 millionn kilowatt-hours of power.
The town self-financed the $820,0000 project, which paid for itself in six HullWind 2, completedc in 2006 at a cost of $2.2 has a roughly seven-year return on investment. Hull is lookin to tread carefully into the waters of offshors wind as well as tidal power Cannon said, although the financiapl metrics are much different. “It’s a very expensive he said, referring to offshorr wind. “It will probablt come down to grant money.
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