Correspondent
SOMERSET - To a lot of people in the tri-county area the idea of generating electricity using the wind is something new, maybe close to science fiction, maybe dangerous. The idea of a wind farm coming to the local hills might seem frightening and more than a little intimidating, but in many parts of Pennsylvania the wind has been generating electricity for nearly a decade.
The Mill Run project was built in 2001. It is located in Fayette County and produces 15 MW (megawatts; one megawatt equals 1 million watts and all production is measured in yearly output). The Waymart Wind Energy Center in Meyersdale was commissioned in 2003 and produces 30 MW, while the Somerset and Green Mountain Wind Energy Centers have been operational since 2001 and 2000 respectively and together are rated for nearly 20 MW of electrical generation.
In the northeastern section of Pennsylvania, two wind farms generate nearly 90 MW at the Green Mountain Energy Center and the Bear Creek Wind Power Project. In the past three weeks ,two more projects were given the go-ahead, one in Stoneycreek Township and the other in Logan Township near Altoona.
When permitting and applications are approved, the Clover Run Project, as it is known locally, will cover Brady, Union and Penn townships in Clearfield County and will include approximately25 2.5-MW turbines, for a total of some 62 rated MW. With every new technology and every step of progress, people will have questions about how such a big project may affect the area.
A lot of people wonder why so many of the developers of these projects are from Europe.
Europe has not enjoyed the low prices of fossil fuels as has America. For decade,s gasoline and diesel in Europe have been far more expensive than here, so in order to meet the need for electricity Europeans had to find another source. They did; wind accounts for about 25 percent of all of Europe's electricity. Along with that need came experience, and the companies that build the projects brought that experience to America.
Many of the components that are used in wind farms are being made in America. General Electric and Westinghouse are building the generators that wind turbines use. Some of the propellors that are used are built in Ebensberg and other components like the towers are being manufactured in New York, Florida and Texas.
Another concern is the sound that generators of this size create. Sound is produced by vibrations. Stand in a grove of trees on a day with just a modest wind and we hear sound. Even the wind crossing an open field will create sound as it moves.
Many townships have adopted levels of 45 to 55 decibels measured 1,000 to 1,200 feet from the turbine as an acceptable level. That is about as much sound as a refrigerator makes from a machine that is roughly four football fields away.
Whether that sound is noise is another matter. Noise is a matter of personal choice. A diesel engine may be noise to one person but the sweet sound of making a living to another. One person would classify the chug-chug of an old John Deere engine as noise, but to a collector of old-time machines it is pure music. So it is, I thought, with the sound created by a wind turbine.
On July 15, Mrs. Schuckers, Jack and Doug Beard, Bob DeBoer and I traveled to Somerset County to visit some operating wind turbines. We stood under them, beside them and about 1,000 feet away from them. We listened, we talked to each other, we talked to landowners and then we listened some more. We listened to township officials about their experience .
Somerset County is near the southern border of Pennsylvania, south of Johnstown. The wind farms we visited are located a few miles outside the town of Somerset, the county seat. It is rural country, not unlike the area where most of us live. There are stretches of road where we saw no houses, but also areas where there were small towns, homes in the country, farms and an occasional camp. It looked much like Clearfield County with perhaps a few more people.
The first look travelers get of wind turbines when they are going south on Route 219 is somewhere north of Johnstown. We could see them dotting the horizon. Even at that distance, we could see they were turning, a good sign because we really wanted to see and hear them in motion. We traveled to the Somerset Wind Project, 5 miles east of town.
Four of the six turbines are located on the Will dairy farm on Wills Church Road. Bob Will left his tractor and met us in front of his barn where we talked farming, windmills and how the two relate to each other for over half an hour.
Will has been a farmer all his life and he would fit right in with any of the dairy farmers in Clearfield County. He had been baling hay earlier and he and a neighbor had just brought in two wagon loads from a field under two of the wind turbines on his farm as we drove in.
The four turbines in his fields were turning as we talked, but if I had not seen them on the way in, I would not have known they were there. The turbines atop the 260-foot tall towers were turning all the time but even when we stopped less than 500 feet away, the only sound we heard was the wind crossing a field. The rotors were turning but there was no "swoosh."
Will said his house is about 1,500 feet from the closest turbine, as are his barns and animals, but there has been no effect on him, his family or his animals since the turbines went into operation eight years ago.
Will farms the fields under the turbines, raising hay and corn right up to the base. The electricity that is produced on his and two other farms is sold to Penelec before it enters the grid to light homes and factories. These six turbines generate about nine megawatts of power.
When I asked Will about how his animals or wildlife reacted to the turbines, he said that when the towers were under construction, wildlife stayed away, but that after the construction was completed that changed. "Wildlife adapt and adjust," he said, adding that he often sees deer, turkey and pheasants under the turbines. Will added that none of his farming operations had been adversely affected.
Will and his wife had very positive reactions to "their" wind turbines. They said many public officials, including the state Secretary of Agriculture and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, have visited their farm. The income that the turbines provide has helped them with their farming operation they said, and in the eight years they have been in operation they have experienced no problems.
The Senior Business Developer for Iberdrola said one of the turbines had been built too close to two houses near the farm, one house being only about 500 feet from a turbine. When the residents objected to living that close, Will bought one house and the company the other, and both homes are now occupied by residents who do not object to their location.
As we left, we could see children playing in the front yard of one of the homes. It was refreshing to hear a company official say they had made a mistake and was also reassuring to see that they were able to solve the problem that error caused.
While we were at the Somerset Project, I talked to Daniel Halverson, who has been a township supervisor in Somerset Township for 16 years. Halverson told me the company has been a "good neighbor" since it first proposed a wind farm in the township in 2001.
He said the township has not seen the need for an ordinance since one exists for the county, and it seems to be working quite well. "A few people wrote letters to the newspaper," he said, "but no one ever came to a meeting to object or try to stop the development."
In the eight years since its commissioning, Halverson said he does not know of any problems that the wind turbines created. So far as he could determine, they have had nothing but a positive effect on the township. Halverson met us at the Somerset Project and we talked beside his pickup truck about 500 feet from an spinning turbine.
From the Will farm we went to another project, the Cassleman Project in Shade Township a few miles away near the town of Rockwood. It is a much larger project, with 23 turbines located on 2,000 acres of reclaimed strip mines. The turbines atop these 260-foot towers were manufactured by General Electric and each one is rated at 1.5 MW. That means that the total power this project can produce is a rated 34.5 megawatts, which translates into enough energy to power 10,000 homes (calculation from the American Wind Energy Association).
Each turbine has a total height of more 389 feet from the ground to the top of the tip of a rotating blade; each one weighs more than 200 tons and sits on a 48-foot wide concrete base which took an average of 270 cubic yards of concrete to build.
Although building a structure thatbig and heavy on reclaimed strip land presented some challenges, there have been no problems since it opened about a year and a half ago. The turbines at both projects sit some 500 - 700 feet apart in roughly a line that is perpendicular to the direction of the prevailing wind.
The power that is generated by this project is sold to FirstEnergy Solutions Corp., which distributes it to power companies in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The project also has its own substation, operation center, and collector transformer. Although the entire project covers some 2,000 acres, only about 40 acres are actually covered by the facilities.
Impressions
The turbines are bigger than I expected. Neither Mrs. Schuckers, Bob DeBoer or I had ever been that close to a wind turbine before, and looking up at a rotating blade 75 feet long, 250 feet in the air was awesome. I appreciate good machines and these are good machines.
I had expected to hear a humming sound from vibrations in the large generators housed at the tops of the units. There was none. I had expected to hear some "swooshing" as the blades turned or perhaps have some difficulty hearing or being heard at or near a turbine. The only sound I heard was the sound of the wind blowing, much as it blows through trees next to my house or over open fields.
I saw some shadows of the turning blades near the towers, but no one I talked to saw that as a problem. Like any shadow, it is most pronounced near the object which casts it and grows more diffused as it moves farther away. I tried to photograph one on the ground next to a tower (it was about 3 o'clock in the afternoon), but that would have been possible only from a spot high above.
Is wind energy a silver bullet to solve mankind's need for energy? No.
No one technology will ever do that. No one is suggesting that wind will replace coal or natural gas or nuclear energy. Our need for energy in the coming century will consist of many parts, each playing a role like pieces of a puzzle.
It is pretty obvious that we generate all the power we need for today, but what about tomorrow? From what I saw in Somerset County, I became convinced that wind energy can and will play a part in meeting our growing need for energy for the next 25 years or so.
Wind turbines have been operating for well over a decade in America and officials at the federal, state, county and local levels have found ways that they can be regulated just like any other industry so that residents and the industry can live together.
Unlike fossil fuels, wind is renewable, it is infinite, it does not emit carbon dioxide and leaves no dangerous waste. Based on what I saw and heard, or did not hear, wind energy is not objectionable to animal or human habitation.
q q q
Reported by Glenn Schuckers, Tri-County Sunday.
|
|
