Writings - Freelance Articles
Winds Shift in Favor of Alternative Power
Metro Times - May 22, 1995
Among the rolling hills west of Traverse City, just before the land slopes sharply down to the bay, a cornfield bordered by pines will soon sprout a plant of a different sort.
A giant three-bladed wind turbine atop a 150-foot tower is scheduled to be spinning by November, cranking out enough electricity for 200 homes.
The windmill project, by Traverse City Light and Power, was made possible by environmentally minded consumers willing to pay a higher ''green rate'' for their electricity, to fund the added cost of generating power through a renewable energy resource like the wind.
The 23-percent surcharge is needed because generating electricity from the wind is still more expensive than burning fossil fuels. That is expected to change as wind generation technology improves and increased fuel and pollution control costs raise the price of electricity from fossil fuels.
For an average of $8 more a month, residential customers enrolled in the program will have the satisfaction of knowing that all their electricity is being provided by the wind. But the big beneficiary is the environment.
The windmill is expected to generate about 1.2 million kilowatts of electricity a year, enough to avoid burning about 500 tons of coal. That keeps about 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas believed responsible for destroying the earth's crucial ozone layer, out of the atmosphere.
Not everyone jumped on the renewable energy bandwagon at first. The project, first proposed in February 1994, nearly stalled that April due to low enrollment. While 200 residential customers were needed, only 30 had applied, and a direct mailing to about 70 members of a local environmental group only drew eight applicants.
The utility company was on the verge of scrapping the program altogether until an appeal to all its roughly 9,000 customers drew the needed applicants by August, and dozens more for a waiting list.
''We ended up with a direct mailing to all of our residential and commercial customers,'' said Charles Fricke, the utility's general manager.
Total cost of the project is estimated at $700,000, with $500,000-$550,000 for the wind generator itself. Other funding sources besides the green rate surcharge include a $50,000 grant from the Michigan Public Service Commission and a potential 1.5-cent-per-kilowatt-hour subsidy from the federal government.
The turbine will be placed on a rise known as Radio Hill for the profusion of red and white broadcast antennas.
Project manager Steve Smiley said the three-bladed rotor is designed to spin at a fairly constant speed of 30 rotations per minute, no matter how fast the wind blows.
''They just sit up there and lumber along like a gentle giant,'' he said. ''You really can't detect any change in their speeds.''
Traverse City Light and Power was the first utility in the country to offer a green rate to fund a wind generation plant, and only the second to offer a green rate of any kind.
Fricke and Smiley were recently honored for their work on the project with Environmentalists of the Year awards, by the same environmental group targeted in the direct mailing.