Background
Some Background on the Peaks Island Wind Testing Effort
Sam Saltonstall
In the summer of 2008, a small group of PEAT members decided it was time to stop talking about the potential for wind power on the island and do something about it. They decided to create a brief report for the Peaks Island council describing some of the possibilities related to generating electricity from wind. Then in November, a group of PEAT members heard Soren Hermanson from Denmark and George Baker, economic consultant to the Fox Islands wind project on Vinalhaven, speak at an Island Institute sustainability conference in Belfast.
We continued to gather information and add it to our report, and we invited Baker to visit Peaks and speak about the economic side of wind development based on his work with the Fox Islands project. Over sixty people crowded into the Inn to hear his engrossing presentation. However, Baker expressed skepticism that a wind project could work on Peaks, saying that Penobscot Bay has a more robust wind resource and citing our lower electricity costs through CMP. Erecting two 1.65 Mw turbines to generate roughly the electricity consumed on Peaks Island in a year would also prove to be a difficult construction and siting task.
But wind maps call our wind resource “good”, and we still felt it was worth testing the wind, potentially for a smaller net metering project that could turn the meter backwards for the school, transfer station and community building. We started looking around for the least expensive way to accomplish the testing, while continuing to update the information in our Report to the PIC, which we finally presented at their February workshop.
Through a contact at Efficiency Maine we learned of Unity College's efforts to set up a fledgling wind testing and analysis program. We contacted Associate Professor, Mick Womersley, the faculty member in charge of the program, and invited him down to have a look around and to speak to islanders on the process of testing the wind.
Womersley felt the best location would be on one of the World War ll naval observation towers. But that idea proved impossible because the land on which the tower is located is protected by a conservation easement which forbids the installation of temporary structures for more than 90 days. Wind testing must be conducted for at least a year, due to the seasonal variation in velocity and direction.
We settled on the idea of getting permission from the City to test the wind on its land at Trott Littlejohn Park, a sand and gravel area a bit lower than the naval tower located across Brackett Avenue from the transfer station. This land had no conservation easements, and had been set aside for some future community use. A plan to use the land for a community garden is under development. Wind testing at the naval tower would have been grandfathered in, but an exemption from the height restriction of 35' common to all zones on Peaks was needed for testing at Trott.
On March 25th, the Peaks Island Council unanimously passed a resolution supporting the idea of testing the wind and asking the Portland City Council to do the same. PEAT had presented on our wind effort twice to the Energy and Environmental Sustainability Committee of the City Council earlier in the winter, and its Chair, David Marshall, was prepared to work with us to obtain the exemption without cost to us. A Planning Board hearing would be needed, followed by a vote of the City Council.
Meanwhile Unity College decided that a 34 meter meteorological tower would be sufficient, instead of the 60 meter tower originally contemplated. The uneven terrain of the park and the need for a small footprint due to surrounding conservation land made the taller tower impractical. Womersley felt that if we could compare wind data collected at the site with data from local residents weather systems, nearby weather buoys, and an anemometer owned by the Maine State Forest Service at the transfer station, we would have enough information to predict whether the wind resource could justify proceeding with a wind project.
on May 26th the Portland Planning Board held a workshop meeting at which it began to consider height exemption language that would allow a meteorological tower equipped with anemometers and wind vanes to be erected for a year on City land at Trott-Littlejohn Park. Several Peaks residents spoke in favor of the idea, none against. Of 27 written comments received prior to the meeting by the Planning Department, 24 favored the idea of wind testing on the island.