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Sunday, September 13, 2009

Environment - "Turning to Windmills, but Resistance Lingers: Court Ruling Highlights Odds Against Them"

Adding again to this long list of earlier wind turbine stories, the NY Times' Abby Goodnough has this long story today - some quotes:

BOURNE, Mass. — Wendie Howland grows her own food and heats her water with rooftop solar panels. She drives a Prius with a bumper sticker that boasts “One Less S.U.V.”

But when Mrs. Howland tried to take the next step in green living — installing a 132-foot windmill in her backyard that would generate enough electricity to power her home — she hit a wall. The planning board in this pastoral Cape Cod town twice rejected the project citing safety concerns and predicting “an adverse effect on the character of the neighborhood.”

Mrs. Howland’s defeat was sealed by a Superior Court ruling in July that backed the planning board’s decision, underscoring the steep odds that residential windmill plans face nationwide. After investing some $40,000 in a 10-kilowatt turbine and legal fees, Mrs. Howland and her husband, Francis, are giving up their two-year fight.

“It’s ludicrous,” said Mrs. Howland, 58, a health care consultant. “We were trying to make our bills smaller as we got older, in a clean and responsible fashion, and it boggles my mind that ordinary people like us aren’t allowed to do that.”

The decision is likely to be scrutinized by towns across the region and even the nation as they grapple with how to regulate windmills on residential property. In wind-rich regions, clashes like Mrs. Howland’s are increasingly common as conservation-minded people seek to install small wind turbines on their property.

Battles over the height and noise level of residential windmills, and even over the shadows cast by their blades, are springing up from Maine to California, even as the Obama administration promotes renewable energy and the federal stimulus package provides 30 percent tax credits for homeowners who install wind turbines.

Many towns still enforce old laws that prohibit anything taller than 30 feet or 40 feet on residential land — a height too low for sufficient wind power generation, experts say. Wind turbines need to be at least 30 feet higher than anything within 500 feet, including trees, which often means a tower of 80 feet or more. The Howlands’ windmill would have been more than three times the height of an average utility pole, to ensure that the surrounding white pines did not interfere.

“Everyone recoils at that,” said Jonathan D. Fitch, the Howlands’ lawyer. “It reminds me of the litigation involving cell towers in the beginning — a lot of neighborhood hostility back then, but today you hardly notice them.” * * *

While residential turbines remain a tiny fraction of the wind energy market, they are popping up often enough for many communities, especially in New England, the Midwest and the West, to start regulating them. Nearly 2,700 wind units with capacities of 10 kilowatts or less, the size used for residences, were sold nationwide last year, up from 1,167 in 2007, according to the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group.

But challenges persist even in communities that have passed ordinances on windmills, like Bourne, where residents overwhelmingly approved a bylaw regulating windmills at a town meeting in 2007. The wind energy association estimates that one-third of small wind projects are thwarted by vague or overly strict local laws, or by outdated zoning rules that preclude them.

More from the story:
Megan Amsel of the Cape and Islands Self Reliance Corporation, a nonprofit group that promotes alternative energy in Cape Cod and southeastern Massachusetts, said she had seen some disastrous wind projects — not because they proved unsafe, but because they did not generate enough power.

“It’s really hard to find a good installer,” she said, adding that there are no certification requirements. “I’ve seen some real disasters, and it can give this emerging industry a black eye.”

The wind needs to blow at least 12 miles an hour for a turbine to generate electricity — a requirement that rules out many sites — and the initial cost is steep. Mr. Stimmel said that the average cost of buying and installing a residential turbine was $30,000, and that it took 6 years to 30 years to recover that cost through energy savings.

The total cost for the Howlands’ turbine, including installation, would be $72,000, they said.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 13, 2009 04:47 PM
Posted to Environment