Posted on 07/15/2012 3:55:31 AM PDT by Jim Noble
PLYMOUTH — Growing quickly along the ridge line above the Plymouth area is a 24-turbine wind farm, due to be completed by January.
Iberdrola Renewables is erecting the white towers along Tenney and Fletcher mountains just north of Newfound Lake. The towers are visible from Interstate 93 at Exit 26.
Large telephone poles are also being built along Tenney Mountain Highway and Fairgrounds Road to support the new electric load that will travel from the area. The electricity will go to a power station near Livermore Falls in Campton and enter the New England grid.
Iberdrola Renewables is a Spanish wind-power giant, with its U.S. headquarters in Portland, Ore. Jan Johnson, communications director for Iberdrola, said there are no complete turbines yet, “but we have five partial towers erected (the base and midsections).''
With blades extended upward, the turbines will be almost 400 feet tall, with blinking lights to alert aircraft. By comparison, the communications tower on top of Tenney Mountain is about 180 feet tall.
The project was approved in May 2011 by the N.H. Site Evaluation Committee; construction began last fall.
Residents in Rumney opposed the project with a rash of concerns, including noise, loss of natural view and decreased property values, but their appeals were exhausted when the state Supreme Court did not take up the case.
The Groton farm turbines will generate 48 megawatts of electricity. The power will go to the Boston area because the purchase agreement was acquired by NStar, now a subsidiary of Northeast Utilities. The electricity will serve 20,000 homes.
The level of carbon-free electricity that will be generated is the equivalent of taking 16,500 cars off the road or not burning 200,000 barrels of oil a year, according to Iberdrola.
The project is the second in the state for Iberdola Renewables, which also operates the Lempster Wind Farm. The Lempster farm is half the size of the Groton project.
According to permit documents, the project will create about 150 jobs — from electric line workers to engineers to people who provide geo technical services — providing more than $1 million in pay and benefits.
The project's estimated economic effect on the region is $81.5 million over 20 years, the documents state. The entire project is within the town of Groton, which will benefit from the tax revenue.
To accommodate the heavy equipment needed for the project, 13 miles of road will be built or rebuilt from a narrow logging road.
The New Hampshire Site Evaluation Committee has approved three wind parks so far, including Coos Wind, which is also under construction. Once the wind farms are operating, New Hampshire will have 136 megawatts of wind power in production.
Iberdola produces more than 50,000 megawatts of wind-powered energy worldwide.
Monuments to stupidity, dishonesty, and greed.
With today’s cheap natural gas from fracking—doe$ any of thi$ make $sen$e anymore?
......Large telephone poles......
Those three words illustrate the difficulty the left has with grasping the green energy delusion. Even those charged with describing the triumph lack the knowledge to understand that about which they speak. The resulting words are just blather
I have no problem with alternative energy. I did notice this article did not include cost/benefit analysis.
I’m getting a little concerned about what thousands of windmills will do to low level weather patterns. We’ve already seen that wind farms in Texas are mixing the air causing it to be warmer on the ground at night in the immediate vicinity.
I realize that a few windmills here and there aren’t going to make much difference but we’re planning on erecting thousands of them. 100 here, 20 there, 150 in another spot. I think we are creating a potential climatic disaster.
Here in the east we have dams up the wazoo, (at least before the watermelons tear them all out) hydro makes a lot of sense. With the modern technology we don’t even need large dams to produce a fair amount of power. Here in Michigan alone we have some 300 dams with 9 feet of head or more. A small retrofit on the little dam in my town could easily power the 60 or so homes here and feed excess into the grid.
It didn’t make sense before that. Now it is doubly stupid.
The Iberdrola family of companies
Iberdrola Renewables, LLC is the U.S. division of parent company IBERDROLA, S.A., an energy pioneer with the largest renewable asset base of any company in the world.
IBERDROLA, S.A. is Spain’s number one energy group and the fourth largest utility company in the world by market cap. A company with a 107-year history and roots in hydroelectric power, IBERDROLA, S.A. employs over 33,000 people in more than 40 countries and has placed the environment and sustainable development at the center of its global strategy.
http://iberdrolarenewables.us/business-overview.html
A Spanish company.
You will find many days when all these windmills will not be moving and generating anything or are shut down because the winds are too high. Wind power also needs back up generators for times when the wind isn’t blowing and there is a demand for the electricity they aren’t producing. Another green boondoggle. Note nuclear plants produce none of that nasty carbon dioxide, are many times more efficient than windmills and operate 24/7 regardless of when the wind is blowing.
“...telephone poles...” ?
As I write this, the total output from the wind turbines in Texas is less than 4% of installed capacity. Who would design and build a system that would be so unreliable? We say down here “That dog won’t hunt”. This is a fraud of the American people.
Source of the truth:
http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/real_time_system_conditions.html
The noise also causes loss of milk production of cows and goats....
Already noticed in China that rain patterns have changed for the worse near large wind farms.
When its hottest or coldest are when the energy is needed the most. Unfortunately when its hottest or coldest tends to be when you have the least wind.
Wind is largely the product of frontal boundaries with the wind being strongest where they meet and nearly non existent at the center of air masses.
Its like trying to produce energy with a shotgun. It produces energy but only for a fraction of a second.
Indeed, just the usual pablum about carbon and taking [XX] cars off the road. Dopey.
More job out-sourcing by Obama.
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