Accusations fly as First Wind fights Clipper for refund

UNITED STATES: Turbine manufacturer Clipper Windpower and Boston-based developer First Wind are engaged in a near-$60 million lawsuit in Iowa over a disputed wind turbine order.

 

First Wind said it paid the money for a batch of Clipper's 2.5MW Liberty turbines, which were never delivered. It also said Clipper has effectively stopped manufacturing the turbines. As of mid-December 2012, the Iowa suit was still ongoing, while a similar action in California was withdrawn on 5 November by First Wind for reasons that are not clear.

First Wind, a former major customer of Clipper, has been trying to freeze $59.5 million of Clipper's assets in three different court jurisdictions. The aim is to ensure that the private equity-owned turbine manufacturer can pay an arbitration settlement under way with First Wind in Chicago currently being overseen by the American Arbitration Association.

The allegations contained in the three court cases are at times startling. According to a memorandum filed by First Wind in the New York case, Platinum Equity purchased Clipper in August 2012 for "nothing - in fact, United Technologies Corporation (UTC) had to inject money into Clipper in order to get Platinum to take the manufacturer and its liabilities off UTC's hands". First Wind has also said that Clipper is on the "verge of imploding".Both Clipper and Platinum declined to respond to a request for comment on the financial side of the deal.

Manufacture offer

In October, Judge Peter Sherwood of the Supreme Court of the State of New York declined to freeze the assets, noting that Clipper had said it was willing to manufacture the turbines if First Wind would only make a firm order. In court documents, First Wind has cited uncertainty over the production tax credit and permitting delays as reasons for not proceeding with its order.

In the Iowa suit, First Wind said that earlier in 2011 Clipper turned down a proposed order for 20 turbines. However, in another court proceeding, Clipper said that First Wind's order was never firm and that Clipper could have assembled the turbines if this was the case. In the Iowa suit, First Wind is reported as claiming it had difficulty obtaining financing for wind projects specifying Clipper turbines because of the manufacturer's financial instability.

Waranty work

NextEra Energy Resources, the largest owner and operator of wind in the US, has become involved. It tried to intervene in the New York suit at the last minute, although the judge ruled before it could do so. In court documents, NextEra said that Clipper was in breach of its warranty obligations - but that the situation would be exacerbated if Clipper was forced into involuntary bankruptcy because First Wind succeeded in freezing its assets.

NextEra declined to comment on its role or whether it is in arbitration with Clipper over warranties. the company has not intervened in the Iowa suit, according to the court clerk's office.

Warranty claims have long been a problem for Clipper Windpower. Just a week before it sold Clipper, UTC said in its financial statements that Clipper had $91 million in reserves for potential warranty claims. Even before UTC bought Clipper in 2010 for $385 million, the Liberty turbine has faced well-known problems such as faulty gearboxes and cracked blades.

There have been reports that Clipper is planning to scale the company back to its servicing operation, which handles the Clipper-manufactured gearbox for the Liberty turbine.

Clipper manufactured the Liberty turbine in Cedar Rapids, Iowa from 2006 until earlier this year. It suspended turbine production and laid off 76 employees after the company was sold to leveraged buyout specialist Platinum Equity. Not long before the purchase, Clipper had warned that it might not be able to keep going without an injection of cash.

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Why It's The End Of The Line For Wind Power

It’s the end of the world as we know it. That’s what the U.S. wind power industry is saying to itself these days. And they aren’t talking about some Mayan doomsday nonsense. On Jan. 1 the federal production tax credit on wind investments expires. For the past 20 years the credit has offset about 30% of the cost of building wind turbines. Add to that the “renewable portfolio standards” for green energy mandated by 29 states, and as a result we’ve seen wind farms spring up across the country. Since 2007 nearly 40% of all the new electricity capacity built in this country has been wind. Wind now generates roughly 3.5% of U.S. electricity. Don’t expect wind’s share to climb beyond that level any time soon. The end of the tax credit could very well mean the end of the wind industry. According to the federal Energy Information Administration, the “levelized cost” of new wind power (including capital and operating costs) is 8.2 cents per kWh. Advanced clean-coal plants cost about 11 cents per kWh, the same as nuclear. But advanced natural gas-burning plants come in at just 6.3 cents per kWh. But it could be getting a lot worse for wind. A fascinating new report by George Taylor and Tom Tanton at the American Tradition Institute called “The Hidden Costs of Wind Electricity” asserts that the cost of wind power is significantly understated by the EIA’s numbers. In fact, says Taylor, generating electricity from wind costs triple what it does from natural gas. That’s because the numbers from the EIA and wind boosters fail to take into account a host of infrastructure and transmission costs. First off — the windiest places are more often far away from where electricity is needed most, so the costs of building transmission lines is high. So far many wind projects have been able to patch into existing grid interconnections. But, says Taylor, those opportunities are shrinking, and material expansion of wind would require big power line investments. Second, the wind doesn’t blow all the time, so power utilities have found that in order to balance out the variable load from wind they have to invest in keeping fossil-fuel-burning plants on standby. When those plants are not running at full capacity they are not as efficient. Most calculations of the cost of wind power do not take into account the costs per kWh of keeping fossil plants on standby or running at reduced loads. But they should, because it is a real cost of adding clean, green, wind power to the grid. Taylor has crunched the numbers and determined that these elements mean the true cost of wind power is more like double the advertised numbers. He explains that he started with 8.2 cents per kWh, reflecting total installation costs of $2,000 per kw of capacity. Then backed out an assumed 30-year lifespan for the turbines (optimistic), which increases the cost to 9.3 cents per kwh. Then after backing out the effect of subsidies allowing accelerted depreciation for wind investments you get 10.1 cents. Next, add the costs of keeping gas-fired plants available, but running at reduced capacity, to balance the variable performance of wind — 1.7 cents. Extra fuel for those plants adds another 0.6 cents. Finally, tack on 2.7 cents for new transmission line investments needed to get new wind power to market. The whole shebang adds up to 15 cents per kwh. Ouch. As Taylor figures it, natural gas would need to cost upwards of $20 per mmBTU before gas-fired power would cost as much as wind. Granted, the American Tradition Institute is a right-wing nonprofit that in the past has railed against climate scientists and sought to discredit Global Warming fear mongering. That doesn’t mean Taylor’s calculations are wrong, just that everyone on the pro-wind side ought to read the report and chime in with their critiques. The American Wind Energy Association says that the wind sector employs 37,000 and boasts 500 factories building components. Even with new anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese makers of wind turbines, the AWEA says that if Congress fails to extend the production tax credit for wind, many of those jobs could be eliminated and factories closed in early 2013. That’s how important these tax credits are to wind’s viability. Taylor and Tanton figure that at the current price of natural gas, and before counting any subsidies or transmission costs, ratepayers are paying about $8.5 billion more this year for electricity from wind than they would have paid if it were gas-fired power. That amount doesn’t even include the cost of the direct federal subsidies. What’s more, ratepayers will have to shoulder that cost for as long as the turbines are in operation. That’s $8.5 billion a year that ratepayers are forking over to subsidize a less efficient, more expensive technology; $8.5 billion that could otherwise be invested in natural gas electricity, or better yet, nuclear. Just think, in South Carolina, power company Scana and its partners are investing about $11 billion to construct two 1,100 mw nuclear reactors on roughly 1,000 acres. To get the same amount of electricity out of wind (remember that turbines operate at an average of less than 50% capacity because of wind’s intermittancy) and you’d need more than 1,700 turbines stretched across 200,000 acres, for an upfront investment of $8.8 billion. The nukes might cost more upfront, but they last longer, they provide reliable base load power and they emit zero carbon. Source

The wind production tax credit still hangs in the fiscal-cliff balance

With Congress and the White House currently concentrating their laser-like focus on averting (or not averting, as the case may be) the fiscal cliff, the fate of various tax extenders is still very much up in the air, including the wind industry’s precious production tax credit (which covers about 30 percent of wind power’s costs — no wonder they’re so keen on keeping it around). The wind lobby is working overtime to convince Congress to pass an extension before the clock runs out on December 31st, but most lawmakers’ concerns are about the bigger fish we still need to fry before the end of the year.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Tuesday unveiled a “Plan B” approach to avoid most of the looming tax hikes, but it did not address the PTC or other so-called tax extenders. President Obama and Senate Democrats were quick to dismiss the offer.

Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-Ohio), who has been a leading negotiator over the fate of the PTC, acknowledged that it and other temporary tax provisions “take a back seat” to the broader debate over the cliff and that it would take “a deal on everything else” to see movement on extending the temporary credits.

Boehner’s proposal was seen as largely a messaging exercise, with the extenders still expected to be along for the ride if Congress and the White House can reach a broader deal on taxes and spending, lawmakers and lobbyists said.

“I suspect this is all for show,” one wind lobbyist said of Boehner’s proposal.

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), who has been leading a public push for a PTC extension with near-daily floor speeches, said yesterday that there have been “a lot of quiet conversations” among senators over how to insert the credit into a broader fiscal cliff deal but that he was not at liberty to say more.

President Obama was much more vocal on the production tax credit and his other renewable-subsidizin’ ventures while on the campaign trail before the election (especially when hitting up states like Iowa), but I haven’t heard him throw much of his weight behind it lately — although of course, his administration is still very much actively for it:

During the informational session, which also included a Q&A segment, Chu officially endorsed the extension of the PTC and re-emphasized his unwavering support for wind power and other forms of renewable energy.

“I’m bullish on the prospects for wind,” Chu told reporters and webcast viewers. “We have to maintain the production tax credit. That’s my plug.”

After highlighting many of the wind industry’s achievements over the past two decades, Chu warned that if the PTC is not extended, many manufacturers established in the U.S. will likely move overseas.

All of these “quiet conversations” undoubtedly concern the usual arguments in favor of such government-sponsored favoritism, including the thousands of jobs that will be lost should the wind credit expire (nevermind that these jobs are all more subsidy-powered than anything else), that oil and gas receive bigger subsidies (although they are relatively infinitesimal compared to the scope of the wind industry, and I must add that I unequivocally support the repeal of all subsidies across the energy spectrum), and that the wind industry only needs a little more “strategic nurturing” before it can finally compete on its own merits (forget that the production tax credit has been around for two decades already).

“With the threat of the PTC’s expiration, wind project developers are not making plans in the U.S. and American manufacturers are not receiving orders,” David Ward of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) told ReWire. “Job layoffs have started already, which could total up to 37,000 jobs lost. Without an immediate extension of the Production Tax Credit, the wind industry is facing the recurrence of the boom-bust cycle it has seen in previous years when the PTC was allowed to expire.”

Hint: The fact that the wind industry is so very tax-credit dependent with a longstanding boom-and-bust cycle, probably is not the best advertisement in its favor. If individual states want to continue to coddle what they have deemed to be renewable energies with their own subsidies (like renewable portfolio standards), then so be it, but the federal government’s longtime special treatment of the wind industry needs to stop.

Claim: “The federal Production Tax Credit (PTC) is an effective tool to keep electricity rates low and encourage development of proven renewable energy projects.”

Reality: When the wind lobby worked to create the tax credit, they were ingenious. Instead of structuring it to increase electricity rates, they structured it to create greater liabilities for taxpayers. By structuring it as a lavish tax credit, the costs are effectively hidden from electricity ratepayers. This allows the wind lobby to claim that it “is an effective tool to keep electricity rates low.” And remember, these are not “deductions” that most Americans are familiar with; they’re “credits,” a dollar for dollar reduction in tax obligations of some huge corporations.

This does not mean that the tax credit is inexpensive. A one-year extension will cost $12 billion because it is guaranteed for 10 years of payout. But, most importantly, those costs are hidden from electricity ratepayers and get lumped together with trillions of dollars in the federal budget.

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TAYLOR AND TANTON: Blow off wind-production tax credit

Wind-energy advocates claim that with just one more extension of the 20-year-old "temporary" wind-production tax credit, wind generation finally could become competitive with conventional sources of electricity. The truth is, it's never been competitive -- and has only appeared to be close because some of its costs have been subsidized and others have been ignored.

Here's the issue. Wind generation has three unusual indirect costs that no one wants to discuss:

The cost of keeping available the primary fossil-fired plants that must balance wind's large variations in output, even though adding wind to the system reduces the amount of generation for which they are paid.

The reduced fuel efficiency that wind imposes on those plants.

The cost of long-distance transmission and the losses that come with it.

As The Hidden Costs of Wind Electricity, a report released by American Tradition Institute, shows, adding conservative values for these real but hidden costs to the most recent generation-cost reports from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy would nearly double wind's projected cost -- from 8 cents per kilowatt-hour without them to 15 cents per kwh with them (after backing out a depreciation-related subsidy and an atypical operating lifetime assumption as well).

That 15 cents per kwh is triple the current cost of natural-gas generation and 40 percent to 50 percent more than EIA's estimates for the cost of new nuclear or coal generation.

It's also unlikely to be reduced much by either technological advances or further economies of scale because wind is a mature technology, its worldwide market is more than $50 billion per year, and its indirect costs are consequences of two fundamental shortcomings that are independent of the turbines. First, with rare exceptions, wind can operate only as an appendage to either natural-gas or coal-fired generation. Second, its most productive locations are far from major cities.

While the three indirect and infrastructure costs listed above have been acknowledged in research reports, they have not appeared in most generation-cost comparisons. That's because regulatory authorities have not required wind operators to pay for them, they've required consumers to pay for them instead. In an honest, transparent and accountable political system, that should not be an excuse for policymakers to ignore their impact on consumers, jobs and the economy.

How large has that impact been? Based on EIA's numbers and electric system operators' conclusions about the amount of conventional generation capacity wind installations can replace, at the current price of natural gas and before counting any extra costs of transmission, wind generation's cost is at least 6 cents per kwh greater than its benefit -- namely, the fossil fuel it can save and the small amount of conventional generation capacity it can replace.

At wind's current 3.5 percent share of generation, that 6 cents per kilowatt hour translates into an extra $8.5 billion that ratepayers have paid this year and will have to pay every year for as long as existing wind facilities (or their replacements) are kept in operation.

However, that's not the worst of it. While most existing wind facilities were built in locations that could piggyback on existing transmission infrastructure, as these easier opportunities are used up, wind's net cost will increase.

Even with an optimistic onshore wind-transmission scenario such as the one described in a widely referenced National Renewable Energy Laboratory report, the gap between wind's cost and its value would increase to at least 9 cents per kwh.

This means the cost of wind electricity would not break even with the cost of natural-gas-fired electricity unless the delivered price of natural gas were about $20 per million British thermal units, or four to five times today's price. Stated another way, if we increased wind's share of all generation to 10 percent and built a transmission system similar to the one the laboratory proposed, wind's excess cost to consumers would increase to more than $30 billion per year.

Of course, if the price of natural gas went up, wind's cost gap compared to gas-fired electricity would go down. Yet its gap with nuclear and coal-fired electricity would not. In order to keep wind in operation, system operators would be forced to buy the higher-priced gas electricity or revert to coal because in the absence of energy storage or hydro-generation, wind always must be paired with one or the other.

In sum, there is no reason to think wind electricity will become competitive with conventional sources or replace any meaningful amount of fossil fuel. If we continue expanding it, wind generation will increase the cost of electricity, tie us to fossil fuels indefinitely and require us to build transmission lines that otherwise would be unnecessary. Those are no reasons for shifting any of wind's cost from ratepayers to taxpayers. Congress should allow the wind-production tax credit to expire, as it always was intended to do.

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First Wind sees future with sun

First Wind, whose name reveals its historical alliance with a specific form of renewable energy, is making a strategic shift toward the sun, with plans to build large solar projects across the state.

The Boston-based wind-energy developer, which already has developed four such projects in Hawaii, says it has maxed out its potential for that kind of project locally. In 2013 and beyond, it is putting its focus on a soon-to-be-released request for proposals for 200 megawatts of renewable energy from Hawaiian Electric Co., which could include solar.

“It’s fair to say, going forward, we are looking at more solar ...

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Supreme Court dismisses lawsuit in Litchfield wind turbine case

LITCHFIELD, N.Y. (WKTV) - The courts have ruled in favor of the Town of Litchfield's ban on industrial wind turbines. There was a lawsuit filed against the town board by leaseholders and their relatives. This ruling means the proposal to building 492 foot industrial turbines in the town- can not move forward.

Supreme court justice Norman Seigel made the ruling on December 6th. The plaintiffs did not challenge any particular provision of the law, which allows wind energy facilities up to 50 kilowatts for personal use, but bans the construction of larger turbines. The law was enacted in March 2012 after two years of deliberations.

Judge Seigel ruled in favor of the town's request for dismissal.

December 7, 2012

New York

New York State Windpower: Enough Business/Government Cronyism

While Invenergy waits for the federal Production Tax Credit (PTC) to be extended by this ‘Lame Duck’ Congress, as expressed in the 12/4/12 Batavia Daily News article: “Orangeville windfarm waits on the tax credit,” there are thousands of local tax- and rate-paying citizens who are eagerly awaiting the expiration, permanent expiration, of this $0.022/kWh subsidy. The PTC is nothing more than a tax-shelter-generator for wealthy, multinational, rent-seeking corporations like Invenergy.

How does a business plan dependent on massive taxpayer-funded handouts for profitability make it past the drawing board in the first place?!? Any of us would have filed such a plan to its rightful place—in the garbage can.

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA)– with the help of political cronies in high places–have attempted, and failed to push the PTC through various bills, not once, not twice, but FIVE (5) times in a little over a year. Congressmen were inundated with letters, e-mails and phone calls each of those (5) previous attempts from a lot of us telling them to say NO to the PTC–which they did. Yet, here it comes again.

No Means NO!

We hope that our elected “public servants” understand that NO means NO! “We the People” do NOT want more wasteful spending on an inefficient, unreliable, antiquated energy source that ruins peoples’ lives, kills hundreds of thousands of birds a year, does nothing to significantly reduce CO2 emissions, and has exorbitant costs to boot.

The sad reality is, however, that with 66 corporate lobbyists for every elected official roaming the halls in Washington, D.C., Big Corporate Big Bucks are working hard to buy the legislation that best suits their bottom lines – taxpayers and sound science be damned.

With 250 industrial wind turbines already strewn across Wyoming County, a number of our rural Townships have been turned into industrial wind factories – devastating the quality of life and property values of many local residents. These peoples’ homes have been rendered virtually worthless. Many of these folks can’t afford to take a huge loss, so they end up stuck there – many suffering from the ill effects of ‘infrasound’ known as “Wind Turbine Syndrome.”

Rural Blight

The desperation of those stuck living amongst industrial wind installations is evident within this e-mail I recently received from one of those residents:

We are at our wits end. My last call to Invenergy two days ago was, needless to say, useless. I told her to shut them off at night or I will cut the locks off and do it my self! My next e-mail will be to the Sheriff — again! If I can get arrested, just maybe I will get my day in court. We have spent at least $20k so far, and are out of money. The health dept also refuses to return my calls.”

It is hard to believe that treating our neighbors like this is actually going on in America today, but it is. All for “the love of money – the root of so many kinds of evil.

Sadly, NYS officials have publicly acknowledged that ‘infrasound’ is a problem from industrial wind factories worldwide, yet they have done absolutely nothing to stop this corporate assault on their taxpaying citizens.

Governor Cuomo has remained shamefully silent, despite lawsuits by NYS citizens who are suing Iberdrola because of the noise issue, and calls to do a long overdue health study. (I wonder if Governor Cuomo would buy one of these noise-damaged homes and move his family in there…!?)

The sad thing is that all of this devastation is for naught. Industrial wind is NOT economically, environmentally, nor scientifically sound energy policy – period.

No Intellectual Justification

The wind industry exists because of their claims that wind would significantly reduce CO2 emissions and thereby reduce Global Warming. After decades of giving $BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars to RICH multi-national corporations like GE, BP, Iberdrola, NextEra, AES, FPL, First Wind, Invenergy, etc, CO2 emissions have NOT been significantly reduced – ANYWHERE!

Since none of the volatile wind production is indexed to actual reductions in fossil fuel generation or CO2 emissions (because it can’t achieve those reductions), the wind PTC is useful only as a means of reducing tax obligations for Stony Creek Wind’s equity partners.

Income generation through tax avoidance has been what the wind industry has been about since the days of ENRON, once the nation’s leading wind producer. Massaging the tax code via phony calls for more “renewable energy” has yielded multinational corporations like General Electric and Florida Power & Light a fortune over the last decade — they haven’t paid a dime in federal income taxes.

To rally support for the PTC corporate welfare program, AWEA is now focusing on their “jobs creation” claims — which are plain, unadulterated hogwash. As anyone who’s done an ounce of research on the wind issue knows – wind is actually a NET JOBS LOSER.

As was reported in the article, NYS Money Road to Nowhere, “On a per kWh basis, wind receives 80 times the public subsidies received by fossil fuels, but produces no reliable electricity capacity and very few American jobs. In fact, for every green job that wind supposedly creates, it destroys two to four regular jobs – in large part due to “skyrocketing” electricity rates.”

Crony Corruptocrats

Beyond all the “green” energy pie-in-the-sky promises that morally-bankrupt wind salesmen or crony-Corruptocrats may offer in the name of The Wind Farm Scam, the incivility of throwing up scores of useless machines (they would be considered lemons if they were any other sort of modern machine or appliance) is a sad testimony about how cheaply people’s values can be bought, and how little many care for the welfare of their neighbors.

If people wonder why the world is in the sad shape it is in, they need look no further than the neighbors stuck living within the massive footprints of dysfunctional wind factories, whom they are choosing to ignore. Selling ones’ neighbors out for the biggest “Swindle” to ever come down the pike is hardly what Jesus had in mind when He told us, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

It’s time to END the PTC! For more information, see: http://ptcfacts.Info/

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Deval Patrick & Paul Gaynor: Crony Capitalism At First Wind

The third fire at First Wind’s Kahuku Wind project since operations began in March of 2011 spewed lead and lasted for three days. The publicly-funded multimillion dollar Xtreme Battery storage facility filled with toxic smoke, and 12,000 batteries were completely destroyed. Hawaii News Now reports some fear this environmental threat will be repeated at First Wind’s other projects.

Hawaii Free Press provides a grim prognosis for Kahuku Wind:

“Recent developments reduce the chances that First Wind will ever be able to repair the defective turbines which were supposed to power the burned batteries at Kahuku.”

Boston-based First Wind CEO Paul Gaynor is Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s appointed green policy advisor under the Global Warming Solutions Act. Gaynor is also appointed co-chair of the Mass Department of Environmental Protection Advisory Committee “Low Carbone Energy Supply Subcommittee.” First Wind has benefitted by a $117 million loan guarantee for (12) Clipper Liberty wind turbines at Kahuku despite a trade secret between Clipper Wind and First Wind executed to obscure from the public information about structural and mechanical problems ongoing with Clipper wind turbines.

Cash-strapped-Clipper, founded by Enron’s James Dehlsen, was recently dumped by the parent company United Technology Corporation UTC to Platinum Equity of CA that expressed no interest in providing remedy to Clipper’s $300 million costs in unscheduled maintenance. First Wind has deployed Clipper Liberty wind turbines in projects across the US according to court documents, with 12 newly installed but idle at Kahuku Wind, by loan of $117 million backed by the public.

First Wind recently sought a writ of attachment from the courts against Clipper Wind for $59.5 million dollars in Cedar Rapids, with arbitration proceeding in Chicago. A similar case has been filed against Clipper under sealed documents in Santa Barbara, CA. The (Iowa) Gazette reported on November 3, 2012: “Clipper has not only ceased production of these turbines, but has wrongfully refused to return the advance payments, even though it has no plans to meet its contractual obligations to produce and deliver the turbines to first wind,” the lawsuit said.”

Massachusetts’ Deval Patrick Administration in May of 2009 identified the long beleaguered Clipper Wind as the Wind Turbine Technology Testing Facility's first customer.

While the Pacific Coast Business Times reported on November 16, 2012, “Clipper Windpower appears ready to implement a plan to eliminate all of its South Coast positions and shutter its Carpinteria headquarters by early next year.”

The Charlestown Wind Turbine Technology Testing Center has received ARRA stimulus of $24.7 million, and $13.2 million in grants and loans from Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MACEC), with Founding Chairman former MA Executive Secretary of Energy Ian Bowles. MACEC, formed under the Patrick Administration’s Jobs Act, collects ratepayer dollars to invest in green business ventures of questionable public merit. This publicly-funded $40 million dollar Wind Turbine Technology Testing Center, operated by MACEC, has provided 0.00 jobs for the past 1.5 years according to the federal government's recovery tracker.

NECN Boston refers to First Wind as 'New England’s largest wind developer.' And, waving a bright red flag Hawaii Free Press refers to First Wind CEO Paul Gaynor as the ‘Hawaii Wind Developer tied to Largest-ever asset seizure by anti-Mafia police.’ UPC First Wind got its start when Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) alum Paul Gaynor was tapped by UPC Group to bring the success of wind projects in Italy, Italian Vento Power Corporation (IVPC), to the United States according to WPI Summer News 2005.

While multiple news outlets, including the Financial Times, report that the President of Italian Wind Energy Association and Director of the IVPC was arrested on “charges related to fraud involved in obtaining public subsidies to construct wind farms” in November of 2009 during Operation “Gone with the Wind.” Oreste Vigorito of IVPC was convicted in July of 2012.

According to House Budget Committee’s ‘Empty Promise of Green Jobs’ study, “The Costly Consequences of Crony Capitalism” 11/21/11:

First Wind Holdings received a $117 million loan guarantee in March of 2010. First Wind withdrew its initial public offering in October of 2010, due to a lack of investor demand. According to the Boston Globe, investors shied away from the company because “First Wind owes more than $500 million, loses money on a steady basis, and reports a negative cash flow.”

The House Oversight Committee Report of March 20, 2012 titled, 'The Department of Energy’s Disastrous Management of Loan Guarantee Program' provides blistering criticism of green company executives lining their pockets before filing for bankruptcy in MA. First Wind, developer of "Kahuku" is identified as (S&P “Junk” rated) in this report.

The Interior Department photo above was actually used for promotional purposes by DOI for First Wind’s Kawailoa project in Oahu. It’s troubling that Secretary Salazar has ignored the catastrophic and publicly-funded failures of First Wind and Xtreme Battery at Kahuku Wind in Oahu. Awarding public subsidies to "Junk" rated wind companies whose technology has ongoing mechanical and structural problems under "trade secret” is an outrage.

Neither the Obama nor the MA Patrick Administration have picked a winner in First Wind so much as they have sealed the fate of tax and ratepayers funding First Wind, affiliates’ and subsidiaries’, vendors’ and dependents’ failures. If the objectives are low-cost green jobs, reliable and affordable energy sources that are reasonably safe, we’ve not met these with public funding, grants and loan guarantees to the US pioneers of UPC First Wind.

Barbara Durkin is the green-energy reporter for the Daily Bail. She has spent the past decade interfacing with regulators and stakeholders in the Ad Hoc review of the "world's largest" Cape Wind offshore wind project. Her independent investigation of wind energy cost vs. benefits has expanded beyond the shores of Nantucket Sound to include land-based renewable energy.

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Orangeville Residents Fighting Expansion of Wind Farm

Wyoming County promotes itself as having more wind turbines than any county in New York State.

But plans to add a new wind farm in the Town of Orangeville are facing stifff resistance from several hundred residents.

Calling themselves 'Clear Skies Over Orangeville,' the group is challenging the project because the turbines would be located too close to homes.

"It is about the people who live here and what they will be subjected to, and if they will be able to stay here," said concerned resident, Lynn Lomanto.

The residents are worried that low-frequency turbine noise, called infra-sound, will make many homes in the small community unliveable.

So far, 'Clear Skies Over Orangeville' have taken the matter to court twice - both times unsuccessfully.

"It seems to be all for the money," adds 'Clear Skies' President, Cathi Orr.

Fighting the expansion has been an uphill battle for the group because land-lease agreements for the installation of turbines offers cash-poor farmers, and town governments, a source of much needed income.

'Clear Skies" is now one of many concerned nationwide groups that have contacted Congress urging them to let the 'Wind Production Tax Credit' expire at the end of the month.

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Backlash against Big Wind Continues

Last month, 60 residents of New York’s Herkimer County filed a lawsuit in Albany that provides yet another example of the growing backlash against the wind-energy sector. It also exposes the double standard that exists in both the mainstream media and among environmental groups when it comes to “green” energy.

The main defendant in the lawsuit is the Spanish electric utility Iberdrola, which is the second-largest wind-energy operator in the U.S. The Herkimer County residents — all of whom live within a mile or so of the $200 million Hardscrabble Wind Power Project — are suing Iberdrola and a group of other companies because of the noise and disruption caused by the wind project.

The lawsuit comes at a touchy time for the wind industry, which is desperately trying to convince Congress to extend the industry’s production tax credit that expires at the end of this year. The subsidy gives wind-energy companies 2.2 cents for every kilowatt-hour of electricity that they produce.

Wind-energy proponents claim that an elimination of this tax credit could result in the loss of 37,000 jobs, but they have not been able to silence the dozens upon dozens of groups that have sprung up to fight expansion of the wind sector. And few places in the U.S. have seen a bigger backlash than New York State. About two dozen New York towns have passed rules banning or restricting wind-energy development, and many rural residents have expressed ongoing concerns about turbine noise.

The noise issue is front and center in the Hardscrabble lawsuit. Neighbors of the project have been complaining about noise from the turbines since last year. Two noise studies done on the Hardscrabble facility found that the turbines sometimes exceed their permitted limit of 50 decibels. In response to the complaints, Iberdrola Renewables — which owns the Hardscrabble project — installed noise-reduction equipment on a handful of the turbines.

In the lawsuit, the residents claim that the noise produced by the turbines on the 74-megawatt facility causes headaches and disturbs their sleep. Some of the residents say they have abandoned their homes because of the noise. Others are claiming that the project has hurt their property values. The key paragraph in the suit says that the defendants “failed to adequately assess the effect that the wind turbines would have on neighboring properties including, but not limited to, noise creation, significant loss of use and enjoyment of property . . . diminished property values, destruction of scenic countryside, various forms of trespass and nuisance to neighboring properties, and health concerns, among other effects.”

For years, the wind industry and its many supporters on the “green” left have been trying to dismiss the turbine-noise issue — and the nearby residents who are complaining about the problem. In late 2009, the American Wind Energy Association and the Canadian Wind Energy Association published a paper that attempted to quiet critics of the noise problem; they stated in the paper that “there is no evidence that the audible or sub-audible sounds emitted by wind turbines have any direct adverse physiological effects.” The paper also suggested that the symptoms critics were attributing to wind-turbine noise were psychosomatic and declared flatly that the vibrations from the turbines were “too weak to be detected by, or to affect, humans.”

The Herkimer County lawsuit — Abele et al. v. Iberdrola et al. — will bring the noise issue into the legal arena where it can be properly adjudicated. But it’s not yet clear what the plaintiffs might get if they win, because the lawsuit doesn’t name a specific dollar amount in damages. Jeff DeFrancisco, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, said that New York State doesn’t allow plaintiffs to put a dollar value on the damages. Further, DeFrancisco said the plantiffs cannot seek injunctive relief because the turbines are already in place. “All we can do is seek compensation,” he says.

DeFrancisco said the litigation was necessary because the residents living near the turbines had no other options. The plaintiffs, he says, “can’t live peacefully” in their homes. “These are people who never had a problem before.” Some of them, he says, “would like to move but can’t because they can’t sell their homes.”

In addition to illustrating the backlash against the wind industry, the Herkimer County lawsuit provides yet another example of the double standard that exists in media coverage of “green” energy. Rural newspapers in New York and a few anti-wind websites have covered the lawsuit, but it has not been mentioned in mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times.

It’s easy to imagine what the coverage in the Times might look like if a lawsuit similar to the one in Herkimer County was filed against a company that was drilling for oil or natural gas. Last year, the Times ran a number of stories under a banner called “drilling down” — some of them were published on the front page — spotlighting hydraulic fracturing and the possibility of water contamination due to drilling.

The issues involved in oil and gas drilling and wind-turbine development are similar. They all entail new industrial activity in rural areas. All bring friction — truck traffic, noise, and other disruptions — to regions that are not accustomed to energy development. But the Times has never published a story on the backlash against the wind industry, even though New York is home to much of the backlash.

Although it’s easy to get riled about the newspaper of record, it’s mainstream environmental groups that display the most pernicious double standard. Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and other groups were founded on the notion of environmental protection. The Sierra Club’s mission statement declares that it wants to “educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment.”

If that’s true, why isn’t the Sierra Club campaigning for the rights of the residents in Herkimer County? Don’t rural landowners have the right to a high-quality natural and human environment that is free from industrial intrusions, like, say, 470-foot-high wind turbines that are built within a few thousand feet of their homes?

The hard reality is that for groups such as the Sierra Club and their fellow travelers, the issue of climate change — and their near-religious belief that wind turbines are an effective method of cutting carbon dioxide emissions — trumps nearly every other concern. If rural residents in Herkimer County and elsewhere are getting steamrolled by wind-energy developers, well, then, that’s just too bad.

It will take months for the Herkimer County lawsuit to wend its way through the courts. But the lawsuit shows, once again, that the anti-wind backlash is growing. And that blowback will only get worse — with or without the help of the self-proclaimed “environmentalists.”

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Michigan’s insane 25×25 proposition: A postmortem

Why Michigan voters wisely rejected the crazy idea of 25% electricity from renewables by 2025

The Michigan Energy-Michigan Jobs (MEMJ) Proposal 3 – its 25 by 25 gambit – would have forced Michigan taxpayers and ratepayers to produce 25 percent of the Wolverine State’s electricity via expensive, unreliable, parasitic wind and solar projects by 2025.

The misguided program has now been laid to rest by the wisdom of Michigan’s voters. What can we learn by autopsying its corpse?

This initiative was hardly local. It was driven by out-of-state pressure groups like the Sierra Club that were backed by the League of Conservation Voters, natural gas company Chesapeake Energy, and a number of deep-pocketed elites. MEMJ itself was funded largely by the Green Tech Action Fund of San Francisco; the Natural Resources Defense Fund of New York, whose president is multi-millionaire Frances Beinecke; and San Francisco hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer.

These carpetbagger activists placed a bull’s-eye on Michigan ratepayers with Proposal 3. Sierra Club was blunt: “If successful, the [Michigan] 25×25 initiative will send an important signal to the nation that public desire to move toward green energy remains strong.”

The grassroots activists who defeated this proposal had no billionaire largesse to draw upon. They were united under the Interstate Informed Citizen’s Coalition, a bipartisan renewable energy consumers watchdog group dependent on small contributions to support its work and committed to advancing sensible science-based energy policies and free market land use policies.

Compelled by the principle that industrial renewable energy schemes like Proposal 3 bring far more benefit to their invisible corporate cronies than to the environment, IICC members traveled the state on their own dime to speak out, protest, educate and inform. Their reward was sweet: they took their message of science-based energy policy to the people, who responded at the ballot box, soundly defeating Proposal 3 by 64-36 percent.

Using Sierra’s own test, Michigan ratepayers have shouted there is no such “public desire.”

In fact, there is widespread opposition to mandating forest-denuding biomass and massively expensive solar. But the hottest conflict focused on industrial wind. Michigan wind projects have lost at the ballot box virtually every time they have been put to the vote in a fair manner – and by similar margins.

At the township level, opposition to wind cronyism is just as strong. In Lenawee County, Riga Township rejected wind-friendly zoning by 64-36 percent. Two more Lenawee Townships followed suit. In Huron County, Lake Township removed a wind friendly ordinance by a similar 61-39 percent. And in Clinton County townships are intent on adopting police power regulations for wind energy installations, in defiance of too-permissive county level zoning.

This opposition is strongly bipartisan. Proposal 3 and its miles of wind turbines were opposed by both the free market Americans for Prosperity and Michael Moore movie producer Jeff Gibbs.

The ballot box evidence is clear. Michigan ratepayers from left to right are emphatic that there is no “desire” for mandated and subsidized industrial wind projects, in their backyard or anywhere in the State.

The push for Prop 3 also broke the big utilities’ code of silence on wind inefficacy. MEMJ unwittingly exposed CMS Energy’s duplicity on this issue – observing that CMS praised its new Ludington area wind plant for furnishing “reliable and affordable energy,” even as its public relations surrogate Care for Michigan was calling wind “expensive and unreliable.” Unfortunately for MEMJ, the Care for Michigan version was the truth.

Opponents of renewable energy have long pointed out that wind energy is parasitic – totally dependent on fossil fuels for backup power, with every megawatt of wind power supported by a megawatt of redundant coal or natural gas generating plants. So wind cannot possibly or meaningfully reduce emissions.

But the utilities stood silent. Their beloved existing 10 percent renewable mandate, PA295, restored their monopoly status and guaranteed them nice profits, in exchange for a small number of renewable projects. They were not interested in biting the legislative hand that was (and is) feeding them.

But Prop 3 brought all stick and no carrot for the utilities. They could no longer remain silent. Out came the truth. Wind cannot replace fossil fuel plants. Wind is not getting inexorably cheaper, but is far more expensive than current generation and, minus the huge hidden subsidies, more expensive than new coal. Wind cannot increase employment without costing employment in other industries that get stuck with soaring electricity bills. Wind energy cannot liberate us from foreign oil or from out-of-state coal imports.

What then did our autopsy discover? Michigan renewable energy mandates – including PA295 – are doomed. Because of gluttonous overreach, they will die by their own hand. Politicians need not fear public reprisal for opposing and repealing renewable energy mandates. It is now safe for lawmakers to acknowledge and act on the fact that renewables mandates like PA 295 are of no benefit to ratepayers, employers or employees, and are of dubious benefit to the environment.

Through the failure of Proposal 3, Michigan wind has been dissected and eviscerated by public opinion. The sooner our elected officials zip the death bag shut and send the corpse out for burial, the sooner Michigan can protect its rural areas from needless industrialization and our energy intensive industries from rising electricity costs that compromise their competitive edge.

Other states, and our federal government, should take note.

Kevon Martis is Senior Policy Analyst for the Interstate Informed Citizen’s Coalition (www.iiccusa.org) in Blissfield, Michigan.

Clipper Windpower’s California HQ to close

A California business journal is reporting that Clipper Windpower, which has a wind turbine servicing operation in Cedar Rapids, plans to close its Caprinteria, Calif. headquarters.

The closing plan was announced at an all-employees meeting on Nov. 7, according to a Nov. 16 report in the Pacific Coast Business Times, quoting an unnamed “person who was present.”

The report said that by February, Clipper will consist of “somewhere under 100 employees,” all of them in Cedar Rapids. It said the remaining employees will likely focus on servicing the proprietary gearboxes on the fleet of 739 Clipper turbines already in service.

Clipper Windpower was acquired earlier this year from United Technologies Corp. by Platinum Equity, a private equity firm based in Beverly Hills.

A lawsuit filed recently by a major customer in Linn District Court documents Clipper’s financial difficulties, which it linked to massive warranty claims resulting from problems with Clipper’s turbines.

Source

First Wind goes to arbitration in $60m Clipper claim

First Wind has gone to arbitration to recover almost $60 million from Clipper Windpower, claiming in court documents that the wind turbine manufacturer "appears on the verge of imploding".

 

First Wind also petitioned the New York Supreme Court, in an effort to ensure Clipper puts aside the $59,521,000 being claimed. The developer said the money represented advance payments made as part of a 2007 turbine deal.

The arbritration is going through the America Arbitration Association in Chicago. Clipper maintained it had access funds if the judgement went against it.

The arbitration hearing follows Clipper's acquisition by private equity company Platinum Equity from United Technologies Corporation. First Wind states that Clipper has effectively stopped manufacturing wind turbines, which the company denies.

The supreme court judge rejected First Wind's petition on the grounds that Clipper said it was willing and able to manufacture the turbines if First Wind placed a firm order and made the "required deposit". The judge also said that taking such a sum of money out of the company could bankrupt it.

Clipper has admitted it has ceased wind turbine manufacturing due to lack of orders. First Wind has also claimed Clipper has stopped its warranty obligations to it and other customers and that Platinum is planning to close down the majority of its operations.

A recent report in the Pacific Coast Business Times claimed Clipper was making around 200 cuts to its Carpinteria head office. It said employees were informed of the plan on 7 November.

The report claimed that Clipper's new CEO Michael Reed - who was installed by Platinum earlier this year - will take the company's head count down to 100 by February next year. All of these will be based at its Cedar Rapids plant.

It said the only part of the company that was likely to continue was its servicing operations, which handled the Clipper-developed gearbox for the 2.5MW Liberty turbine.
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HECO says Kahuku Wind Farm's battery storage system will cost at least $8M to replace

Hawaiian Electric Co. says its interconnection facility inside the battery energy storage system warehouse at the Kahuku Wind Farm on Oahu's North Shore, which was destroyed by fire in August, will cost at least $8 million to rebuild and take about a year to complete.

The 15-megawatt system, which helps stabilize the wind energy output for the grid, houses both HECO's interconnection facility and Kahuku Wind Farm's control rooms.

The Hawaiian Electric Industries' subsidiary also noted in a letter sent last week to the state Public Utilities Commission that the scheduled completion date for its interconnection facility is late 2013. That means that Boston-based First Wind won't have its Oahu wind farm up and running until the latter part of next year.

Additionally, HECO says that First Wind will replace its battery energy storage system with a D-Var System, a voltage regulation device made by American Superconductor that has proven wind farm experience.

Source

Clipper chops South Coast jobs, operations

Read the article

60 Herkimer Co. residents file lawsuit against wind farm owner

Some Herkimer County residents near the Hardscrabble Wind Farm are fed up with the noise, the view and “negative impact” they say 37 wind turbines bring to their backyards.

Frustrated by the wind farm that some residents say drives them “crazy,” 60 Middleville, Fairfield and Norway residents have filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court against the entities responsible for its construction, namely Iberdrola Renewables.

“A lot of it has to do with the effect that it’s having in being in close proximity to the residences,” said Jeff DeFrancisco, an attorney from DeFrancisco & Flagiatano Law Firm of Syracuse.

Among the complaints, the lawsuit asserts that those responsible for the construction of the wind farm were negligent in assessing the site to determine whether it was properly suited for the project, and that the 450-foot turbines are a public and private nuisance.

Iberdrola Communications Manager Paul Copleman said the company had no comment since it had not received the papers.

DeFrancisco, who is working with Syracuse environmental Attorney Melody Scalfone, said the concerns range from the negative impact the turbines have on the residents’ enjoyment of their home to health problems and difficulty selling the property.

Noise concerns

Jimmy Salamone, who lives on Davis Road in Fairfield, said he gets headaches and his ears ring.

“The noise is literally driving me out of my house,” he said.

Iberdrola installed a noise-reduction system at four turbines in Fairfield earlier this year. Prior to that, the town had requested sound studies.

Fairfield Town Supervisor Henry Crofoot said he anticipates the preliminary results of the system to be presented within the next month.

Salamone said the town leadership hasn’t had the residents’ best interests in mind.

“I’m very, very disgusted with the way our town supervisor and Town Board have handled any of this,” he said. “These things are hurting people.”

Crofoot, who said he has not seen the lawsuit, said the town is doing what it can.

“We will do whatever we can to help our residents within the letter of the law,” he said.

‘We’ve got to leave’

Salamone said he hopes the lawsuit will encourage Iberdrola to shut down the wind farm, or that the plaintiffs will be “heavy compensated.”

“I would expect them to buy my house, whatever the lawsuit is, and we would leave,” he said. “One way or another, we’ve got to leave.”

Leaving is difficult for many residents, DeFrancisco said, because the turbines can impact property values.

“A lot of people don’t want to live in that area because (turbines) obstruct the view,” he said.

Others, Scalfone said, bought property intending to build a retirement home and now can’t sell the land because of the turbines.

The bottom line is the turbines are a nuisance, he said.

“The New York law simply states it’s unreasonable interference with the use and enjoyment of your property,” Scalfone said. “The residents’ quality of life has been significantly impacted.”

Some Herkimer County residents near the Hardscrabble Wind Farm are fed up with the noise, the view and “negative impact” they say 37 wind turbines bring to their backyards.

Frustrated by the wind farm that some residents say drives them “crazy,” 60 Middleville, Fairfield and Norway residents have filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court against the entities responsible for its construction, namely Iberdrola Renewables.

“A lot of it has to do with the effect that it’s having in being in close proximity to the residences,” said Jeff DeFrancisco, an attorney from DeFrancisco & Flagiatano Law Firm of Syracuse.

Among the complaints, the lawsuit asserts that those responsible for the construction of the wind farm were negligent in assessing the site to determine whether it was properly suited for the project, and that the 450-foot turbines are a public and private nuisance.

Iberdrola Communications Manager Paul Copleman said the company had no comment since it had not received the papers.

DeFrancisco, who is working with Syracuse environmental Attorney Melody Scalfone, said the concerns range from the negative impact the turbines have on the residents’ enjoyment of their home to health problems and difficulty selling the property.

Noise concerns

Jimmy Salamone, who lives on Davis Road in Fairfield, said he gets headaches and his ears ring.

“The noise is literally driving me out of my house,” he said.

Iberdrola installed a noise-reduction system at four turbines in Fairfield earlier this year. Prior to that, the town had requested sound studies.

Fairfield Town Supervisor Henry Crofoot said he anticipates the preliminary results of the system to be presented within the next month.

Salamone said the town leadership hasn’t had the residents’ best interests in mind.

“I’m very, very disgusted with the way our town supervisor and Town Board have handled any of this,” he said. “These things are hurting people.”

Crofoot, who said he has not seen the lawsuit, said the town is doing what it can.

“We will do whatever we can to help our residents within the letter of the law,” he said.

‘We’ve got to leave’

Salamone said he hopes the lawsuit will encourage Iberdrola to shut down the wind farm, or that the plaintiffs will be “heavy compensated.”

“I would expect them to buy my house, whatever the lawsuit is, and we would leave,” he said. “One way or another, we’ve got to leave.”

Leaving is difficult for many residents, DeFrancisco said, because the turbines can impact property values.

“A lot of people don’t want to live in that area because (turbines) obstruct the view,” he said.

Others, Scalfone said, bought property intending to build a retirement home and now can’t sell the land because of the turbines.

The bottom line is the turbines are a nuisance, he said.

“The New York law simply states it’s unreasonable interference with the use and enjoyment of your property,” Scalfone said. “The residents’ quality of life has been significantly impacted.”

Source

Meteorological test towers to be put up in Wayland

They’ve been put up around Wayland, so why not in Wayland?

Pittsburgh, Pa. -based Everpower Wind Holdings Inc., the same company with wind turbines in nearby Howard, will be putting up two meteorological test towers in Wayland.

"[Meteorlogical test towers] primarily measure wind speed and direction. The information these towers provide will allow us to assess the wind resource of the area,” Everpower senior director of development Kevin Sheen said.

The results of the tests will help Everpower determine whether there is enough wind speed necessary to build wind turbines, and will help the company learn the wind direction to assist in siting turbine locations.

Everpower is hoping, weather permitting, for the test towers to be up by Christmas.

Everpower's Howard Wind Project utilizes 25 turbines and generates 51.25 megawatts of electricity at full load – enough to power the equivalent of 35,000 households, Sheen?said.

The exact locations of where the Wayland test towers will be placed have not yet been disclosed by Everpower.

However, Sheen said that one met tower, which will stand at 190 feet, will be placed two miles northwest of Hartsville; and the other tower, which will stand 313 feet tall, will be placed two and a half miles southwest of Cohocton.

Each tower will stay in place for at least three years, possibly up to five years.

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Wind farms drop property values

The EverPower wind farm proposes 29 turbines, 494 feet tall, towering over homes on Chipmonk Road, Four Mile Road, Knapp Creek and Birch Run.

Many other homes and businesses in Allegany, Olean and Carrollton, including St. Bonaventure University, Rock City Park and St. Elizabeth’s Motherhouse will have a view of the turbines for decades ahead.

The Allegany Town Board members have been apprised of the concerns of property owners surrounding the wind energy facility.

A National Research Council (NRC) study submitted to the Allegany Town Board showed that of existing property value studies near wind energy facilities, few studies focus on non-farm, residential property in close proximity to (not bordering, but in the vicinity of) a wind farm, and “forecasts of property values in prospective host areas that are based on comparisons with existing host areas are of questionable validity, especially if there are significant differences between the areas.”

However, studies in Wisconsin and Ontario, Canada, show alarming drops in the value of residential real property near turbines. Therefore, the NRC recommends wind energy project sponsors "provide property-value guarantees to property owners within a specified distance from the facility when they want to sell their properties."

EverPower has never proposed doing this.

Homeowners are legitimately alarmed by the prospect of the loss of value in their primary investment. Residents also submitted to the board a study performed by the Appraisal Group One, Wind Turbine Impact Study, in Wisconsin, where property in “bordering proximity” to wind-energy facilities lost a whopping 39 percent to 43 percent. Losses continue in property that is in “close proximity” with up to 36 percent loss, while property in “near proximity” saw a negative impact of 24 percent to 29 percent.

The study further found that having a turbine within view caused the property value to plummet 30 percent.

While many property owners did not receive official assessment reductions this past year because the wind-energy facility is not yet constructed, real property values in the area have already suffered. Recent letters in this paper have brought this fact to the attention of our representatives.

There are no comparable real property value studies taking into account the character of our area and the extreme wind-energy installation now proposed for Chipmonk. The turbines in the Wisconsin study referenced above are 389 feet tall. Another study released this month by Lansink Appraisals & Consulting, Case Study, Diminution in Value, Wind Turbine Analysis, found that residential (non-farm) property near a wind farm in Ontario, Canada, lost 38.8 percent of its value. The turbines in the Canadian study are 393 feet tall.

Turbines for the Allegany project will dwarf those of the Wisconsin and Canadian studies. EverPower will make the citizens of Allegany, young and old, the research population for this colossal experiment on wind turbines for their own profit.

What would happen if your home lost 40 percent or more of its value? This is the agonizing reality for residents and property owners in Chipmonk, Knapp Creek, the Four Mile and the Birch Run. Note that our individual losses will also reverberate throughout the community.

Recently, the assessment rolls in Wolfe Island (on the St. Lawrence Seaway) were reduced by $3 million dollars because homes in close proximity to turbines lost value. (The turbines on Wolfe Island are 410 feet, 84 feet shorter than those proposed by EverPower.) The tax rolls for this township show 78 significant assessment reductions since 2008 (the wind farm became operational in 2009). The six homes nearest the turbines lost $100,000 each.

Obviously, wind turbines erected near residential areas have a negative effect on property assessments.

Property owners, residents and business owners should be aware that, while Allegany homeowners pay property taxes at full rate, EverPower would be allowed to make greatly reduced fractional payments. The unavoidable declines in Allegany’s tax rolls will substantially offset any wind farm PILOT payments.

The Allegany Town Board’s responsibility is to protect the health and general welfare of all citizens within the community. Unless the board is able to do the job it was elected to do, decades of weak property values will cause irreparable harm to the town and school tax base.

Source

How Green Energy Works

Study links wind turbines to illness

Opponents to wind farms who allege health risks have their first scientific support in a peer-reviewed study linking proximity to turbines to illness.

An article, published in the "Noise and Health" journal, gave optimism to some people in rural and agricultural southwestern Ontario, where wind farms are proliferating despite resistance from residents, the London (Ontario) Free Press reported.

The scientific journal addressed a study done in Maine by Canadian epidemiologist Jeffery Aramini that suggested people living within a mile of wind turbines experienced more sleep deprivation and mental health issues than those further away.

"The reality is that some people are getting sick," Aramini said. "As a public health person, I can't wrap my head around [government inaction]."

Opponents in Ontario have been rebuffed for several years by the provincial government and health officials, who said there was no scientific basis for health concerns.

Esther Wrightman, who leads one local opposition group near Strathroy, Ontario, called the report a breakthrough.

"I view it as a huge step forward. It definitely gives credibility to our case," she said.
Chris Forrest of the Canadian Wind Energy Association played down the journal's report.

"The balance of scientific, medical and human experience to date clearly demonstrates that sound from wind turbines does not adversely impact human health," he said.

Source

Customer seeking to freeze Clipper Windpower assets, including Cedar Rapids factory

A major Clipper Windpower customer is seeking to freeze the recently sold company’s assets — including its Cedar Rapids factory and equipment — to ensure it can pay a possible arbitration settlement.

Wind project developer and owner First Wind Energy LLC said Clipper accepted $59.5 million in advance payments for wind turbines it no longer produces in the lawsuit filed last month in Linn District Court in Cedar Rapids.

Clipper manufactured its huge Clipper Liberty 2.5-megawatt wind turbines in Cedar Rapids from 2006 until earlier this year. The Carpinteria, Calif.-based company has been sold twice in the last two years.

Clipper’s leaders were tight-lipped this past summer as Clipper suspended turbine production and laid off 76 employees after the company was sold by United Technologies Corp. to a private equity firm, Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Platinum Equity LLC.

Warranty claims, according to the lawsuit, have been a huge financial problem for Clipper Windpower. The company’s previous owner, United Technologies Corp., indicated it was setting aside $91 million to pay for warranty claims on Clipper’s products.

First Wind, based in Boston, said the undelivered turbines and related issues are now part of an arbitration proceeding in Chicago. It is seeking a writ of attachment on Clipper’s Iowa assets because it is worried that Clipper Windpower will dispose of them, making it impossible for First Wind to collect any award it receives in arbitration.

“Clipper has not only ceased production of these turbines, but has wrongfully refused to return the advance payments, even though it has no plans to meet its contractual obligations to produce and deliver the turbines to first wind,” the lawsuit said.

“Indeed,” the lawsuit continued, “Clipper even turned down First Wind’s proposed order for 20 turbines earlier this year.”

Clipper began producing turbines in Cedar Rapids in 2006. The lawsuit claims that as early as early as March 24, 2008, because of Clipper’s financial difficulties, First Wind and another customer had to provide secured financing to Clipper so that it could meet its repair obligations.

The lawsuit also details difficulties by First Wind in trying to obtain project financing for wind development in which it planned to use Clipper Windpower turbines because of Clipper’s financial instability.

First Wind had expected the acquisition of Clipper by United Technologies about two years ago to ease the financial problems, but it did not, the lawsuit said.

As evidence of Clipper’s non-production status, the lawsuit detailed a series of email exchanges last March.

First Wind was seeking clarification of Clipper’s production capabilities because it was interested in buying 41 turbines to take advantage of the possibility of receiving U.S. Treasury grants to assist in financing a wind development. It believed its prior deposits with Clipper might serve as owner equity in qualifying for the grants.

Clipper’s chief commercial officer, Robert Gates, confirmed in the exchanges that Clipper was rebuilding turbine gear boxes for warranty purposes and no longer building new turbines. In fact, he said, Clipper had recently “passed” on a 16-turbine sale to have more gearbox components to serve existing customers.

In the same email exchange, the lawsuit says, Gates indicated another turbine model slated for production by Clipper likely would not be available until 2014 or 2015.

“By May 2012, First Wind was informed by Clipper that it had ceased all manufacturing of wind turbines and had no intention of resuming manufacturing them,” the lawsuit said.

First Wind has purchased 150 of the 2.5-megawatt Clipper wind turbines since 2006, according to the lawsuit. The importance of having Clipper continue to honor parts, service and maintenance agreements on the turbines is one of the critical concerns for First Wind and other Clipper customers.
Clipper Windpower’s attorneys have been granted an extension to respond to the lawsuit. CEO Michael Reed declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying the company does not comment on litigation.

Platinum Equity, Clipper’s new owner, did not respond to a request for comment.

Clipper Windpower’s $22 million investment in Cedar Rapids was one of Iowa’s first victories attracting wind power manufacturers in 2005. At least five other states had been courting the promising California company as it got ready to launch production.

A basket of state incentives included a $500,000 forgivable loan, $2 million short-term loan, $346,000 infrastructure assistance grant and enterprise zone benefits.

Clipper is facing a similar lawsuit to freeze its assets in California courts. Much of that lawsuit in Santa Barbara Superior County Court is under seal, according to the Pacific Coast Business Times.

First Wind submits second Bowers Mountain wind-site application

CARROLL PLANTATION, Maine — A First Wind subsidiary will try again to build an industrial wind site on Bowers Mountain, this time proposing to erect 16 turbines instead of 27, company officials said Wednesday.

The new project, company officials said, answers problems that led the Land Use Regulation Commission to reject the initial plan in April. Under the new proposal, turbines would be farther from nearby lakes. The towers would feature radar-controlled aviation warning lights to reduce light pollution and carry turbines that generate 30 percent more electricity than previous models.

First Wind of Massachusetts or its subsidiary, Champlain Wind LLC, also will create a watershed fund — money that could be used to improve the deer herd and promote local guiding and other tourism businesses, officials said.

“This is a $100 million project that would be located in rural Maine and has the potential to put nearly 100 Maine companies and hundreds of Mainers to work during the construction phase, with several permanent positions for the life of the project,” said Matt Kearns, First Wind’s vice president of Northeast business development. “The wind industry has invested more than $1 billion in Maine over the last few years and with projects like this we can continue to invest in Maine companies, communities, students and organizations.”

“Since 2009 we have been listening to people who live in and around the project area to make sure that their input is considered in the design of the project,” said Neil Kiely, director of development for First Wind. “Although it is early in the review process, we are extremely encouraged by the support we have received.”

Located east of Lee and southeast of Springfield near Route 6, Bowers Mountain is 1,127 feet. It overlooks seven lakes — including Bottle, Keg, Duck, Junior and Scraggly lakes — near the western Washington and eastern Penobscot county lines.

Its surroundings include some of the most sensitive wildlands in Maine, project critics have said. The mountain is home to many varieties of wildlife as well as thriving camping, hunting and wildlife guide industries.

About 144 residents reside in the proposed host community of Carroll Plantation. Recently, 112 residents and landowners signed a petition in support of the project, company officials said.

Now called the Land Use Planning Commission, LURC voted 5-0 with little fanfare to accept a staff recommendation and reject the 27-turbine project during a brief meeting April 20 at the Four Points by Sheraton hotel in Bangor. Commissioner Robert Dunphy abstained.

Commissioners said they were swayed by arguments that the project would have a punishing effect on hundreds of nature guides and other tourism-based industries employing hundreds more indirectly that all depend on the area’s beauty to survive.

The commission’s scenic consultant said that Champlain Wind’s consultants downplayed the project’s impact upon the region. In their 27-page decision, commissioners said they relied heavily on testimony from the area’s guides that the turbines “would reduce the likelihood their clients would want to return to the area and thus [the turbines would] adversely impact their businesses.”

Anti-wind-power advocates and residential groups that had opposed the project called the LURC vote their most significant win since they started fighting projects proposed by First Wind of Massachusetts about five years ago.

“It’s a good day. We have been fighting this for a long time,” David Corrigan, a registered Maine Master Guide from Concord Township who opposed the project, said on April 20. “This sets a great precedent. The commission spent a lot of time discussing and looking at this. I think it sets a precedent as far as how these projects should be scrutinized and what the results should be.”

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection has accepted the new, or second, application, spokeswoman Samantha Depoy-Warren said. The agency certified the application as complete on Oct. 25. Environmental protection officials are required to have two public hearings on the project. One hearing will be attended by the agency’s commissioner or deputy commissioner, Depoy-Warren said.

Under new state laws passed during the last legislative session, the DEP and LUPC will review the project concurrently, with LUPC certifying to the DEP that the project meets LUPC criteria, LUPC Director Nick Livesay said. The DEP will issue the project’s final permit, if the project qualifies, he said.

First Wind claims endorsements for the project from the Maine Audubon Society, American Lung Association of the Northeast, Conservation Law Foundation, the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, and the Maine Chapter of the Sierra Club. The project has also been endorsed by the Washington County commissioners and the Sunrise County Economic Council, officials said.

One of the project’s opponents, Lakeville resident Gordon Mott, expressed doubt Wednesday that the new proposal would change his opinion. He credited the company with scaling back the project’s footprint but said he didn’t see enough conservation benefits in the new effort to warrant his support.
Mott cautioned, however, that he had not seen the proposal in detail.

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Ten years too late, it’s good riddance to wind farms – one of the most dangerous delusions of our age

The significance of yesterday’s shock announce-ment by our Energy Minister John Hayes that the Government plans to put a firm limit on the building of any more onshore windfarms is hard to exaggerate.

On the face of it, this promises to be the beginning of an end to one of the greatest and most dangerous political delusions of our time.

For years now, the plan to cover hundreds of square miles of the British countryside with ever more wind turbines has been the centrepiece of Britain’s energy policy — and one supported by all three major political parties.

Back in 2008, when Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced his wish to see the country spend £100 billion on windfarms, the only response from the Tory leader David Cameron was to say that he should have done it sooner.

It was the only way, they all agreed, Britain could meet our commitment to the EU that, by 2020, we must produce nearly a third of our electricity from ‘renewables’ — with the largest part provided by tens of thousands more wind turbines.

Yet now, out of the blue, has come this announcement by the Coalition Energy Minister that from now on there is to be a moratorium on building onshore turbines other than those for which consent has already been given.

Bonanza

What made this even more piquant was the fact that Mr Hayes chose to drop this bombshell just hours before attending a conference in Glasgow staged by RenewableUK, the professional lobby group for Britain’s wind industry.

These are the very people who for years have been making fortunes out of the greatest public subsidy bonanza of modern times. Now Mr Hayes is to stop their gravy train in its tracks.

It will give them the biggest shock of their professional lives.

Mr Hayes' diktat only referred to the prevention of wind farms on shore, but many turbines are placed out at sea to maximise wind exposure

The ramifications of such a policy U-turn stretch in all directions, not least to Brussels, where our EU colleagues won’t be taken in for a moment by Mr Hayes’s disingenuous claim that Britain doesn’t need more onshore windfarms because we are now on course to meet our ‘renewables’ target without them.

But nowhere will this announcement be greeted with more delirious surprise than in all those hundreds of communities across the land where outraged local protest groups have formed in ever greater numbers to fight the onward march of what they see as the greatest threat to Britain’s countryside for centuries.

Ludicrous

I have been following this extraordinary story for ten years ever since, in 2002, I first began looking carefully at what really lay behind this deceptive obsession with the charms of wind power. It didn’t take me long, talking to experts and reading up on the technical facts, to see that the fashionable enthusiasm for wind energy was based on a colossal illusion.

I first warned about what I called ‘the greatest mistake in our history’ in an article in the Mail almost ten years ago.

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Wind Farm Called "Giant Pain in the Neck"

Crohnote: Again I say Governor Cuomo...Are you watching? Is this the company you want New Yorkers to continue to do business with? Is this the company you will let, along with British Petroleum, industrialize and destroy the tourist economy of the 1000 Islands? The towns of Fairfield, Middleville, Norway, Hammond, Clayton, Orleans, Brownville, Morristown, Oswegatchie, Parishville, Hopkinton, Litchfield, New Hartford, Frankfort and many more have, and will, continue to suffer at the hands of this foreign corporate giant all for the sake of green energy. Allowing the greed of foreign corporations to have priority over the health, safety and welfare of your constituents while continuing the promotion of the most inefficiently produced form of renewable energy MUST STOP.

October 30, 2012

Dozens of neighbors of a $200 million wind farm sued the companies behind it, claiming noise and lights give them migraines, make them nervous and keep them up at night. Their dogs bark too much, dairy cows are less productive, and TV and Internet services are interrupted, the 60 plaintiffs claim in Albany County Supreme Court. All live within a mile of the Hardscrabble Wind Power Project, northeast of Utica in the rural communities of Fairfield, Middleville and Norway. Iberdrola Energy Services and a slew of affiliates are named as defendants, along with Hardscrabble Wind Power, Atlantic Wind USA and affiliates, engineering consultant CHM2 Hill and staff acoustical engineer Mark Bastasch.

The property owners claim the defendants “carelessly and negligently failed to adequately assess and/or test the site of the Hardscrabble project to determine whether the subject project would be feasible and/or produce reasonable benefits to the community.” They say the wind farm – with 37 turbines that stand 476 feet tall – is too large, too noisy and too close to their homes. The 74-megawatt project began producing electricity in January 2011, according to the website of Iberdrola Renewables, an affiliate of Iberdrola USA. The project is touted as “home-grown” because the blades and tower sections for the turbines were made in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Iberdrola USA, which provides gas- and electricity-delivery services to 2.4 million customers in New York and New England, is a subsidiary of Spain’s largest utility, Iberdrola S.A., which owns hydroelectric, fossil-fueled, nuclear and renewable power-generation facilities worldwide.

The plaintiffs accuse the companies of negligence, private nuisance, trespass and strict products liability. They seek punitive damages, saying that “all of the defendants acted willfully, recklessly, were grossly negligent, and/or acted with a conscious disregard with regard to each of the allegations set forth in this complaint.” The 49-page complaint details a litany of damages from each plaintiff, from headaches and stress to sediment in drinking water and airport-like noises.

Plaintiff Diane Abele says she has lost profits from her dairy farm “because the cows have been less productive since defendants built the turbines.”

Plaintiffs Bernadette Baylor and Richard Baylor Jr. say they have been unable to sell their house and land since the wind turbines were installed. They claim that because of the turbines’ noise, they abandoned their home, now rent another, and were forced to file for bankruptcy.

Plaintiffs Andrew McEvoy and Theresa McEvoy bought their property in 2002 and 2 years later bought alpacas “with the intention of building an alpaca farm,” according to the complaint. But since the turbines were built, they suspended the operation, into which they had invested “considerable time and money.”

Plaintiff June Salamone “has increased headaches, nervous/tension feelings of panic and anxiety, dizziness, and sleep disturbance due to the wind turbines,” the complaint states. “The thumping and whooshing sounds from the turbines permeates through plaintiff June Salamone’s body” and she “cannot get an uninterrupted night of sleep.”

All of the plaintiffs claim they have “suffered a significant loss of use and enjoyment” of their property and “a negative impact on the value of the property.”

They say the wind farm operated at just 22.8 percent of capacity last year, “contrary to the intent and purpose of creating significant renewable energy,” as the defendants proposed.

They also claim the wind farm was built “because of huge governmental subsidies to the benefit of the defendants” and “little or no benefit to the public.”

The plaintiffs worry that “when the turbines become old and no longer function … Herkimer County may be left looking like a vast industrial junkyard.”

Rural Herkimer County, just east of Utica, includes large swaths of the Adirondack Mountains.

“Plaintiffs allege that all of the defendants have caused significant damage to the plaintiffs and that such damage is substantial, irreparable, and was proximately caused by the acts of the defendants as set forth in this complaint.”

The plaintiffs are represented by Jeff DeFrancisco and Melody Scalfone, with DeFrancisco & Falgiatano in Syracuse.

Source

Lakes not so great for wind projects, according to new energy blueprint

ALBANY – The Cuomo administration, which last year scuttled as too expensive a plan to construct the nation’s first wind energy farm in the Great Lakes, is putting its offshore focus in an area 15 miles into the Atlantic Ocean off New York City.

Now questions are arising about whether Lake Erie and Lake Ontario will ever be tried, at least by the current administration, as a source for the renewable form of energy generation.

The new state energy “blueprint” released last week in Albany presents a clear preference to focus efforts on a state wind farm plan off the Rockaways in New York City. It comes seven months after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed an agreement with President Obama and governors of Great Lakes states to develop offshore wind farms more quickly.

State officials insist they are not closing the door on Great Lakes wind generation. But they also say there has been little interest from developers and much concern over the high cost of trying to place turbines not only far from the state’s main energy demands downstate but also on bodies of water that freeze during winters – such as Lake Erie – or in the deeper waters of Lake Ontario.

“We are open to develop Great Lakes offshore projects,” said Gil Quiniones, the president of the New York Power Authority and point person involved in developing an energy planning blueprint presented to Cuomo last week at the Capitol.

For now, offshore projects are far more expensive than land-based wind farms, said Quiniones, whose agency late last year killed a plan – citing at least $1 billion in potential costs – to place up to 150 turbines offshore between Buffalo and Chautauqua County.

Environmental groups say the Cuomo administration missed an opportunity with its new energy plan to focus more on renewable forms of energy, including Great Lakes wind projects, and that the new blueprint will send a sour signal to wind farm energy investors.

“We’re at a crossroads in this state. We see power plants on the verge of retirement and the decisions we make today are going to have an impact for decades. The failure to include Great Lakes wind as part of our wish list is a failure of the plan,” said Brian Smith, program and communications director at the Citizens Campaign for the Environment, a statewide advocacy group with offices in Buffalo.

Smith said the new energy blueprint offered only “lip service” to future wind development.

“This is certainly not a signal to offshore wind developers that New York is open for business,” he said.

The scuttled Great Lakes plan was backed by many environmental organizations but opposed by a number of shoreline communities for a host of reasons, including backlash from residents who did not want waterfront views to include large turbines on the horizon. And state officials said the costs to build and maintain the turbines would have been long-term money losers for ratepayers.

“Great Lakes wind projects would be extremely difficult and very expensive,” said Senate Energy Committee Chairman George D. Maziarz, a Newfane Republican.

While Lake Erie is not as deep as Lake Ontario, making development costs potentially lower, Maziarz said community protests were heard by regulators and politicians alike. “The local communities were up in arms in opposition to it. I would think it would be a nonstarter,” Maziarz said of future Great Lakes wind projects.

The Cuomo administration’s energy blueprint released last week said high costs make offshore wind development “not expected in the near term.” The New York Power Authority, along with power companies on Long Island and New York City, has a licensing application under way with federal officials to begin the process, though, of developing an Atlantic Ocean project off Queens. The blueprint said the Great Lakes Offshore Wind project, killed last year, “suffered from inadequate site and resource information along with premature issuances of a competitive solicitation.”

Now, the document states, the state should “pursue more targeted site assessment” for wind with a focus on the Atlantic Ocean projects “in order to best leverage limited state-level funding,” it said.   Source

Horse Creek Wind Farm developer might upsize project, begin state siting process as soon as next spring

Horse Creek Wind Farm’s developer could introduce a larger project under the state’s Article X siting process.

Paul N. Copleman, communications manager with Iberdrola Renewables Inc., said the current proposal — which would be considered by a state siting board instead of Clayton planners if, and when, the developer moves forward — is for a wind farm of up to 126 megawatts.

However, the state, in Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s recently released “energy highway” blueprint, identifies Horse Creek Wind Farm as a potential renewable energy project with an electricity-generating capacity of at least 126 megawatts and as much as 376 megawatts.

“We haven’t made any determinations yet about the size of the project or the type of wind turbines we may propose,” Mr. Copleman said.

Wind farm developer Atlantic Wind LLC, a subsidiary of Iberdrola, last asked Clayton to consider a 48-turbine, 96-megawatt project.

In 2005, it initially sought a 130-megawatt project with 62 turbines in the southeastern part of Clayton and the neighboring town of Orleans, but downsized it by removing Orleans from the project’s scope.

After a year of inactivity, the company recently suspended its local application with the Clayton Planning Board to seek an Article X review, which would expedite the approval process and give a state siting board the authority to override local zoning laws that it deems unreasonable.

“We did recently inform the town of Clayton that we intend to pursue the Article X process for our Horse Creek project, but we don’t anticipate beginning that process until next spring at the earliest,” Mr. Copleman said, adding that it is “premature to speculate” on the timing of a project application to the state.

There are too many unknown factors that could affect the application and construction of Horse Creek, he said, such as the condition of the electricity market and federal policy.

Congress has yet to renew the U.S. government’s production tax credit for wind energy, which is set to expire at the end of the year.

The $12 billion tax credit provides 2.2 cents per kilowatt for the first decade of a wind farm’s operation and opinions are split, with the Obama administration pushing for the continuation of the incentive and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney seeking to end wind subsidies.   Source

First Wind abandons Kahuku expansion as wind farm remains offline

Kahuku, Hawaii

Twelve wind turbines that rise above Kahuku remained motionless Friday, like frozen giants sitting among the Koolau Mountains.

It's been nearly three months since a fire knocked the Kahuku wind farm offline, and local residents are wondering when the project by Massachusetts-based First Wind will once again generate power.

"A lot of Kahuku residents feel since it's here, that the sooner they find a solution and can get this facility up and running again, the better it is for everybody," said Kent Fonoimoana, a board member of the Kahuku Community Association.

The 30-megawatt wind farm, capable of powering 7,700 homes, was crippled Aug. 1 after a fire erupted inside the project's battery warehouse. It was the third fire inside the 7,000 square-foot warehouse since the wind farm began generating power in March of 2011.

First Wind spokesman Kekoa Kaluhiwa tells KITV4 the cause of the fire remains undetermined, and it's not known when the project might get back online.

"Unfortunately, we still haven't come to a conclusion on the exact cause of (the fire)" said Kaluhiwa. "We are working with Hawaiian Electric on steps forward, and seeing how we can bring the project back online."

Although First Wind could face sanctions under a 20-year contract with Hawaiian Electric Co. if power generation doesn't resume, HECO spokesman Darren Pai said the focus right now is getting the wind farm back online.

"That's our principal concern right now, and we're not focused on contract provisions that don't have any immediate impact," said Pai.

Meanwhile, First Wind has abandoned plans to add five wind turbines to a parcel of land below the current wind farm footprint in Kahuku. The decision comes after the KCA voted in May not to support the expansion.

"They made it quite clear that they do not want to see more turbines in the Kahuku area," said Kaluhiwa.

Although the KCA board voted to support construction of the original wind farm, some board members like Fonoimoana are now openly wondering whether the project was the right fit for the area. That's especially true now that the wind farm has ceased generating power.

"I consider wind turbines a huge blight on the community," said Fonoimoana. "We are surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, and in my honest opinion, the answer to our energy problems or energy challenges, are surrounding us."

The battery energy storage system used by First Wind in Kahuku and the Kaheawa Wind II project on Maui was developed by Texas-based company Xtreme Power. The batteries are needed to evenly distribute energy along the electrical grid.

State Sen. Mike Gabbard is concerned enough about the Kahuku wind farm being rendered useless, he's planning an informational briefing at the state Capitol sometime in December.

"We haven't set a date yet, but when we bring all the parties together, that will be able to provide some of the answers for the community," said Gabbard, who chairs the Committee on Energy and the Environment. "Bringing together First Wind, Xtreme Power, also Castle and Cooke (and) the Department of Health, so we can just see what's going on."

Kahuku residents receive no discount on electrical rates after supporting construction of the wind farm. Instead, First Wind provides $45,000 a year in the form of a benefits package.

However, Fonoimoana and other members of the KCA want to know exactly how the money is being spent. The KCA received $2,500 from First Wind as part of the deal, but hasn't received a list of other expenditures.

"We have requested in writing and in person an accounting of who's getting what," said Fonoimoana, "But to date, we have yet to receive that from First Wind."

Kaluhiwa was unable to provide a list of organizations receiving funds from the benefits package, but said First Wind supports efforts in education, erosion control, health care and perpetuation of the Hawaiian culture.

Source