Wind energy within our reach

For Green Ridge Wind Farms, it's any way the wind blows

By Dorathy Chocensky
Anyone who’s ever watched a boat sail or a kite soar can tell you that wind is a powerful force.

Green Ridge Wind Farms, a Belfast-based alternative energy company, can show its clients how to harness that force to cut their energy bills and mitigate their households’ impact on the environment.

The first step in pursuing wind as a residential energy option, said Stephen Hallee, the company’s president and co-founder, is to answer the question, “Is your home site a good wind site?”

A good site has the right mix of terrain, orientation and wind flow. To determine whether a site is suitable, Hallee performs a topographical analysis using three-dimensional, computerized maps, which are detailed enough to pinpoint individual house lots. If the topography seems favorable, he consults wind maps and databases to establish the direction and speed of the wind.

Next, Hallee generates a wind analysis report that describes the appropriate tower elevation and turbine hub height, and “what you can expect for energy output on an annualized basis.” He then walks the site with the homeowner to help decide where to locate the equipment.

Green Ridge Wind Farms sells and installs wind turbines. However, it is possible for a handy person to do the installation alone. Hallee plans to hold a workshop on the subject in the near future.

“I’m going to have a wind power erection seminar — a two-day seminar on how to install a wind turbine and install a tower, culminating in the erection of the largest wind tower available for residential use,” he says.

Thereafter, the 70-foot, 3,200-watt demonstration turbine will reside at Hallee’s home in Searsport. “I have it right in the backyard ready to put up,” he says.

Money and power

Of course, while the wind itself is free, the equipment isn’t. According to the American Wind Energy Association, “a small turbine can cost anywhere from $6,000 to $22,000 installed, depending on size, application and service agreements with the manufacturer.”

Hallee suggests that property owners finance the equipment with a home-equity loan. Over time, they will see the investment offset by an increase in property value and a drop in their electric bills, he said.

“Every wind turbine will pay for itself before it wears out, in many cases long before it wears out, and it’s all gravy after that,” he said. “What you have to look at is savings over the lifetime, regardless of what the cost is.”

Once the turbine has been erected, Hallee recommends connecting it to the local utility company’s power grid, avoiding the expense of storing power and “bypassing the need for toxics in batteries.” This option is possible because, by law, Maine utilities are required to allow consumers to connect to the grid.

Power companies also are mandated to offer “net metering,” a system that allows customers to “bank” the power they produce and use it to offset the cost of what they would have to purchase, within a one-year period.

Hallee explained it this way: “If you get up in the morning and turn on the [electric] dryer and there’s no wind, the meter spins rapidly. As soon as the wind picks up, the meter will slow down because it’s consuming the power you’re generating first. If you turn off the dryer, and you’re not consuming any power in the house, and the wind is whipping, then you feed power back to the grid.”

Under a net-metering arrangement, Hallee said, “Everyone can generate just as much as they can consume.”

Excess power cannot be sold back to the company, however. “If you make extra, you’re not going to get paid for it,” he said.

“We can have an impact”

For Hallee, the financial benefits of wind power are secondary to the environmental advantages. “What I’m saying to people is that there are reasons for alternative energy beyond the economic,” he said.

Citing global warming and other potential environmental disasters, he warned, “If we don’t start doing something now, it will be too late sooner than we think.”

Coal-fired plants in the Midwest, Hallee noted, emit mercury, sulfur and carbon dioxide, which create acid rain that falls here in Maine and damages our ecosystem.

“We can have an impact,” he said. “By going to an alternate technology, we hopefully are going to starve those guys to the point where they will turn off those plants.”

In addition to doing site evaluations, wind analyses, and turbine sales and installation, Green Ridge Wind Farms is seeking investors for larger-scale wind power projects.

“People can invest and be given shares, and they can own part of a utility company in the alternative energy field,” Hallee said. “This is a way that people can make even more of a difference in protecting our environment for future generations.”