Thursday, March 29, 2012

Portsmouth High School Turbine

The turbine at Portsmouth High School is the largest turbine (1.5 MW) put up in Rhode Island; it is located in the town of Portsmouth and is located next to the high school.  The location of the turbine made it easy to connect with the power grid and is net metered to the grid.
(Net metering is where small energy providers are connected to the grid and allowed to supply excess energy they produce.  Some programs pay for the excess energy, while others provide credits on electric bills.  These small energy providers are small business and homes, mostly a single wind turbine, solar panels or other renewable energy providers.  Rhode Island has a net metering programs that allows business to be connected to the grid but only provides credits on electric bills.) 
Since the completion in March of 2009 the turbine it has produced 8,863,800 kWh, at a price of 20 dollars per kWh.

The people of Portsmouth voted on whether or not the turbine would go up, however the town only told the people what would be good about the turbine. There wasn’t any information given about the possible negative effects to the citizens that live close to the turbine.   Now that the turbine is up there are neighborhoods that are being affected by shadow flicker and the noise the turbine creates.  In some cases it has forced people to change the way they live.  I have included a video taken within on of the homes affected by shadow flicker.

2 comments:

  1. I wouldn't be too happy if I had a giant windmill in my back yard either. I feel I am obligated to let you know: Portsmouth High School just recently put up a Turbine that is even BIGGER than the Abbey's. Too bad the voters didn't see your blog; now there's a much bigger flicker on a whole new neighborhood.

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    1. Thank you for pointing this out, I had meant to write about the High School's Turbine. It was late and I had placed the wrong name on this. Thank you again.

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