World Wind Watch | Green Energy News

January 11, 2004 – Vol.8 No.42

WORLD WIND WATCH.

While much of the push (and sometimes resistance) for wind development has been towards large wind farms, it may be the smaller projects - a turbine here, a turbine there - that keep the industry busy in leaner times.

Many of those smaller projects begin with concerned citizens that create organizations, or work with their communities, to build new, local wind capacity.

Thanks to the efforts of a handful of people in the town where this editor grew up, Kingston, Massachusetts may be on the road to its first grid-connected turbine. With funding from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, the town’s Secure Energy Future Committee will soon have a 166-foot wind monitoring tower installed at the town’s waste-water treatment facility. If results after 6 -12 months prove ample for economical wind power generation, steps will be taken to install a turbine at the site and possibly at others in the town.

Aside from providing emission-free energy to the grid, a turbine at the waste water treatment site may serve as a good promoter of wind energy for the area. The turbine will be easily visible from a nearby commuter rail station as well as from a major freeway that leads to Cape Cod or Boston. The bent arm of the Cape is where efforts are underway to build the 400-plus megawatt Cape Wind offshore wind farm.

Ron Maribett, a principle force in the 14-month effort to get the wind test tower erected, is interested in communicating with others about the green energy efforts for Kingston and communities elsewhere. He can be contacted at Ron_Maribett(at)hotmail.com

The town was one of the first to receive funding from Mass Tech in a $4 million program to help Massachusetts communities build wind power projects. Visit Mass Tech at http://www.masstech.org/ .