Blades Turn, Ribbon Cut at New Portsmouth Turbine

PORTSMOUTH, RI—A crowd of state and local politicians, representatives from North Kingstown's Wind Energy Development and the community gathered at the base of a towering wind turbine reaching above the treetops by Portsmouth High School on Friday.

A blue ribbon was held in front of a set of galvanized metal steps that lead to a door that looks like a portal to the inside of a rocket booster. With the snip of a pair of scissors, it became official: the new Portsmouth Wind Turbine is operational and the construction job is complete.

So ends the saga of the once ill-fated effort by the town to build a wind turbine to generate clean energy and set an example for other towns by declaring that community-led sustainability efforts can work. The new turbine, erected over several weeks beginning in late spring, replaces a turbine that was built in 2009 after a 2007 $3 million local bond referendum was passed. It failed within three years, setting off a chain reaction of unintended consequences worsened by the collapse of the company that built it.

Meanwhile, the town was saddled with about $1.5 million in debt, a turbine that needed millions in repairs and little recourse.

The deal with WED, officials said, manages to solve all of the problems. It was reached in 2014 after town officials went through a lengthy public hearing and workshop process before ultimately deciding to replace the old turbine instead of tearing it down forever.

Under the 25-year deal with WED, the town gets a new turbine owned by WED, which also agreed to absorb the town's lingering debt. In exchange, the town will buy electricity at a rate of about 15.5 cents per kilowatt hour. In comparison, the rate for power from the recently-completed Deepwater Wind project—the first offshore wind project completed in the United States—is 25 cents.

A report by Finance Director Jim Lathrop showed that the town can consider the deal a good one if regular average electricity rates are at 10 cents per kilowatt hour or above.

If energy rates fall to 7.5 cents, “the bottom line is the deal becomes more in favor of the wind developer than ourselves,” Lathrop told the Town Council in 2014.

The new turbine stands almost 280 feet tall. The deal will require the town buy at minimum 3.8 million kW/hr from WED per year, which means the school district is a needed partner. Town officials said the benefit of the deal is that it eliminates the town’s risk as owner/operator since those obligations would be transferred to WED. The town would also be getting annual payments.

WED officials said common complaints about turbine noise and shadow flicker have been minimized and essentially eliminated.

Photos of the turbine under construction in June by by Milla Hershman.