Cash-strapped towns embrace wind projects

[jpak]

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070715/NEWS01/707150382/1032

CLINTON, N.Y. — Tammie Trombley had never heard of wind turbines before Noble Environmental Power wanted to put them on her family's 1,205-acre farm.

Standing outside her home one June afternoon, taking a break from unloading tractors full of hay bales, Trombley, 37, pointed to where Noble would erect five massive 1.5-megawatt generators. The company is assembling 67 towers in Trombley's town of Clinton and another 54 towers in neighboring Ellenburg.

By and large, both upstate New York communities seem to be welcoming Noble.

Clinton and Ellenburg are cash-strapped communities dependent on dairy farming and jobs in towns miles away. Wind turbines mean subsidy money in the town coffers, and opportunities.

<more>

[Bread and Circus]

1. I've read about this in other places and though more money is

nice for some of the families, they seem to get ripped off. The numbers I've read can be as little as $6,000 per year to the land owner, about $500 per month. Considering these mills are covering 500 homes each, that means the land owner is getting about $1 per home per month, which is a very small fraction of the average electricity bill.

Towns would be better off to come together and build these installations and sell the energy to the power companies and share the money amongst themselves. Would that ever happen, probably not.

The other "hey, wait a minute" thing about this is that the company is going to install 5 mills on her farm, each serving about 500 households, which is 2500 households, equalling about 7500 people. This is probably more people than is found in her whole town. It's kind of mind blowing to think that there's enough energy breezing over someone's farm to power there whole town's residential needs. But there you have it.

LOL, I just did a quick dig and I found this:

As of the census2 of 2000, there were 727 people, 270 households, and 201 families residing in the town.

That means 1/2 of 1 mill would be enough for the whole town's residential needs.

There's gonna be 57 mills in that town. I wonder if they are going to get free electricity. I doubt it.

I do believe we are at the beginning of an energy revolution however. Expect us all to be driving electric cars by 2030. I have hope.