Liam Cohen – 4/5/09

For my fourth visit I decided to go to Jiminy Peak.  Jiminy Peak is a Ski resort up near my country house.  I chose them because they have a wind turbine that provides about half of the energy the ski resort uses.  So I went and interviewed an expert on the wind turbine.  And the most surprising fact that I found out was that they didn’t install the turbine to be Green, they installed the turbine to save money, so it’s good both ways.  But instead of writing an incredibly long blog post I will just put up the questions I asked and their responses.  

Oh, by the way:  KWh stands for Kilowatt hour.  

  • What made you decide to get wind turbines?
    • The main reason for them to get a wind turbine was to gain some control over what they were paying for electricity. 
    • Their costs had increased greatly and the couldn’t increase their prices so they went looking for a solution
  • How long did it take for the wind turbines to generate enough electricity to be sufficient?
    • Depends on the time of day
    • swings from back and forth each day: less and more
    • but based on a scale of a year, they use only about half of what they generate
    • they only have one turbine
    • they purchase, about 4.6 million KWh per year.
    • They actually use about 7 million KWh per year
    • 2.3 million KWh is used from what the wind turbine generates. 
  • Where did you get your equipment?
    • It was purchased from general electric
    • the components of the turbine came from all over the world
    • The blades came from brazil
    • The nacelle came from Europe
    • The tower came from Canada
  • How expensive was it?
    • The turbine cost about 2 million dollars about half of the whole project costs
    • The engineering, the environmental studies, the delivery, and they needed to change also the electrical infastructure to coop with the turbine
    • the whole thing cost about 3.9 million dollars
    • From that they got a grant of about 600,000 dollars from the Massachusetts Technological Collaborative 
  • What do you think is the best alternative energy?
    • He is most familiar with wind power
    • He doesn’t know much about other alternative energies
    • For this environment, jiminy peak: The wind there is the highest in the winter months and that’s also when jiminy consumes the most power.  
  • Do you think jiminy peak will branch out and try different types of renewable energies, Like solar?
    • There looking at solar a little
    • they are thinking of attaching solar cells to the administration building
    • downside is that they don’t have a lot of space to put the cells. 
  • Do you think that the wind turbines were a good investment economically speaking and environmentally speaking?
    • Yes, but they didn’t do it to be really green, the did if for a pure economical sense.  
    • They do enjoy though the green effects of it
    • but the true purpose was to get ahead economically
  • Do you guys make any money by feeding back electricity into the grid?
    • they decrease the amount it costs for the KWh from 16 cents to 9 cents
  • Are you guys dependent on the wind turbine?
    • No, because it goes back and forth some times they take energy from the turbine and sometimes they take energy form the grid. 
    • But it is a great asset to them.
  • Do you think that you will add more turbines later on?
    • Maybe, they have another site that is capable of holding another wind turbine
    • But currently for them it doesn’t really make economic sense.  It would make the “payback” time longer
    • After the first “payback” time they may think of investing in another wind turbine. 

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