....................480 Adams Street, Suite #208, Milton Massachusetts, USA • 617.696.7758
 
 
 
 

Wind Turbine Hookup Cost Could Nix Plan

Scott MacKeen
Staff Writer
9/14/10
It may cost as much as $1 million for the town to hook up a wind turbine to the NSTAR system, where the clean energy would be sold back to the grid.

If costs run that high, the wind-energy project, which the town has already worked on for more than two years, could be in danger of falling through.
“This will be your go-or-no-go point,” Town Administrator Kevin Mearn told Selectmen on Sept. 2, explaining that Milton is in the process of passing permits to NSTAR to determine a final cost analysis for the hookup.

 

Mearn added that it could cost $1 million, but said “that is a soft number” and “it will, I hope, be significantly less than that.”

“If NSTAR determines that the cost of interconnection is too high, that would effectively make the project economically unfeasible,” said Wind Energy Committee Chair Rich Kleiman in an e-mail. “However, we have had more recent discussions with NSTAR indicating they have identified a less expensive plan for interconnecting our wind turbine to the grid.”

The site where town officials hope to install a 400-foot-high wind turbine – on the old town landfill off Randolph Avenue – has been called one of the most advantageous spots in the country to develop wind energy, officials say.

Town support for the project has been nearly unanimous, although opposition has come from Quarry Hills Partners, the development group that owns the Granite Links Golf Course. The turbine would be visible from the course, and the owners say it would negatively impact the vistas and play on their fairways.

Officials have pushed wind energy for its potential for cost savings and to relieve the burden on taxpayers. According to a presentation Kleiman gave to Town Meeting in March, the predicted gross savings over the 20-year expected life span of the turbine is about $17 million. About $7.6 million of that reflects the total revenue the town would realize from the project. Revenue in the first year of the project was estimated at $141,000, with as much as $800,000 achieved in later years of the turbine as the debt gets paid down.

However, Selectman John Shields said those figures could be “skewed” if the NSTAR hookup price tag is too high.

“It’s hard to recover $1 million,” he said.

Kleiman said a final cost for the interconnection should be known by October.

“We remain optimistic this issue can be resolved favorably,” he said.