| I've been seeing wind turbine parts being trucked south for almost a year. I didn't know that they've been building like crazy over the Winter and through the Spring but driving around this week I saw that a nearby wind farm has (at least) two 2 Megawatt mills up and running.
It was hard to find any info on the site as there were more pro- and anti- wind web sites about on the location (Cohocton, NY) than specs about the facility. Even the "official site" had plenty on property values and bird kills but nothing on capacity or physical specs. I did find his on a fan site-
The project will include approx. 41 wind turbines, each with a generating capacity of 2.0 MW. Each wind turbine will include an 87-meter (285 foot) diameter, three-bladed rotor mounted on a 78-meter (256 foot) tall steel pole tower (total maximum height of 121.5 meters [399 feet]).
I've had quite a case of size-envy seeing the individual blades going down the interstate on tandem trailers. Here's a picture I found of the blades and hub being installed
http://yeswindcohocton.com/IMG_0249.JPG
There was also a note explaining one delay assembling the turbine: the blade hadn't been installed because there'd been too much wind! (>20mph)
The tower base is 16 feet in diameter but from a distance it looks like a drinking straw holding up a peace sign... there is a sense of hugeness even at a distance.
Cool.
The Cohocton site is about 30 miles south east of me and as best as I can tell there are two more wind farms in the works in that area; the town of Cohocton passed some rather friendly wind laws to attract developers (which are still being fought by the other side.)
The nearest wind farm that seems to be moving forward is a 57 MW plan about 25 miles southwest of me while one that would have been just 20 miles south of me was held up so long by "concerned citizens" that the developer went elsewhere...
It was a bit depressing so see some of the anti-wind tactics being used. Beyond environmental considerations, I've seen law suits at the state level over parliamentary practices at town meeting, possible interference to the line of site with (unbuilt) microwave tower rights. My favorite "issue" (which may or may not be true)is an anti-trust allegation that the building of the sites is controlled and fixed by a few international corporations. The lowest blow to me though, are articles with garish headlines like "Windmills produce considerable C02" but, if you read the article, you'd see there's no mentions of emissions or CO2 at all; but if you didn't you'd still have a nice anti-wind sound-byte to parrot to your friends.... and honestly, I thought we had a handle on the bird strike issue but after a morning of reading the "news" I'm not sure that wind turbines won't be responsible for their imminent extinction.
While local folks in the towns effected sit on both sides of the issue, it seems that the anti-wind conciliations try to get the matter into courts outside of the local scope as soon as possible. Luckily the state seems to be pro-wind in general, but moving the issue outside of the local scope seems to me to remove local representation from the decision. I'm hoping though that windpower here has enough momentum that even the dirty tactics can't keep pace.
- Ed. |
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