Cape towns have tough time with turbines (Mass.)

[jpak]

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070429/NEWS/704290338

The Cape has plenty of wind, and at least nine of the peninsula's 15 towns want to take advantage of the natural resource with their own wind turbines.

But the wheels of progress are turning slowly. Although the state-financed Massachusetts Technology Collaborative has awarded a total of $711,000 in exploratory funds to those towns since 2002, not a single town has erected a turbine.

Despite interest in at least nine of the Cape's 15 towns, there has yet to be a municipal wind turbine built in the region. The only industrial-sized turbine on the Cape so far is at Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Buzzards Bay. Several nonprofits also have projects in the works. Here's where they and the town proposals stand. All of the turbines are partially funded by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, a state agency funded by a renewable energy charge on utility bills, and money paid by utilities that don't have the required percentage of renewable energy as part of their power generation portfolio.

"Massachusetts — and New England in general — has been a very difficult place to site wind turbines," said Greg Watson, a former vice president of sustainable energy with the collaborative who now works in the state's renewable energy program.

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[MADem]

1. I wish we'd all just get off our asses, I mean...really

Hull's two turbines supply 13 percent of the electricity used by the town's 12,000 residents and town facilities. The town also receives hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in tax credits and other incentives for producing green power. Orleans settled on a lease arrangement that would pay the town $64,000 in the first year, increasing by approximately 7 percent each year. The town also will receive 340,000 kilowatts in free and low-cost power for its water treatment plant.