Eryn Dion
News Staff Writer
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| News staff photo by ERYN DION The John R.S. LeClerc wind turbine was offline from Jan. 29 to March 6. |
The turbine, located behind Narragansett Middle-High School, went out of service on Jan. 29 after problems with the earthing ring.
The blades were not turning again until March 6, said John Driscoll, Templeton Municipal Light Plant general manager.
“I would estimate that we lost 231,000 kilowatt hours of wind generation from our power supply,” Mr. Driscoll said.
Two years ago, the wind turbine was taken offline for about three months while the Light Department investigated issues related to the machine’s gearbox, but the general manager said the box was “doing just fine,” and that all mechanical problems have been repaired with the help of outside technicians and Light Department personnel.
Within its first few days back online, the turbine was generating enough power to cover the average Templeton household’s electricity needs for an entire year, Mr. Driscoll said.
On average, the turbine produces 4 to 5 percent of the town’s entire power supply.
The downtime will not have a significant impact on rates for March and April, Mr. Driscoll said, because a large majority of the town’s power supply comes from either renewable or green energy sources, or is prepurchased, keeping customers relatively insulated from unexpected supply disruptions.
“For February 2015, the wind turbine was only budgeted to be 4.42 percent of our entire power supply,” Mr. Driscoll explained. “So our having to go to this more expensive power unexpectedly is a non-issue in the grand scheme of things.”
“Diversification of our energy resources is really the key to not having the loss of any one resource wreak havoc on our customers’ electric rates,” he added.
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Question? - If " The downtime will not have a significant impact on rates..." and losing "
231,000 kilowatt hours of wind generation from our power supply,”
231,000 kilowatt hours of wind generation from our power supply,”
Why build it in the first place?
Where do you think he got the money from to fix this "wonder turbine" and what did it cost this time ? I can't help but help but wonder why would you build a wind turbine in a hole ?? Maybe L&W shut it down so it would not throw ice at the neighbor's houses. Hey, you just never know ?? Bev.
ReplyDeletewhat was the projections when this wind mill was purposed ? please ? anyone ? , MY feeling is used of less oil , wood , and more thermal, water, wind and solar is the right direction and what is the meaning of this > renewable or green energy sources please ?
ReplyDeleteThe cost to repair the three issues it had were not much compared to the amount it cost the rate payers. In the long run the Light department charges us as much as they can and bank as much as they can to be able to purchase the power on the spot market when the wind turbine fails to produce. A far larger concern could be if the largest customers close up like the old mill on mill street did and no longer purchase power from the town owned utility. That woud cause a power purchase agreement to cost us all dearly. As it is now if Seaman paper shut down and draws little power there is no where for it to go and we would take a hit on the price. With the residential amount close to self powered we need to see how things like another large customer / paper mill closure would be on the overall cost for our utility to keep power cost low for us. We over pay now as charged so they have a account with MWWEC to raid when things happen. The wind turbine just in 6 weeks caused the account to loose a cool 1/4 million due to loss in production and purchase price control or lack of.
ReplyDeleteWhen the General manager talks about the rates of residential customers he seems to stay away from the comercial comparison issue. Why would that be? Is the largest user special and allowed to get a better deal for the rate? I would think they should but when the rates and cost go up for one it should for all. Questions need to be asked and how the answers come out may be a surprise to people in town. Will we see a different format for the report they give for the town report. Will it show the whole picture or another changing way to report things. When the water audit was being done the amount of water loss needed to be changed to make the water loss rate under 10% to keep the department from being looked at closer. The original 24-28% loss number was way to high and due to the way the auditor added things up needed to be changed. With so many people not paying their bill/a very large %/ one wonders why they done follow their own rules about shutting the water off. Are they sticking "our"necks out a bit to far? As our sewer department fell deeper why would the water not know better and allow us to put behind further without action. They have stopped marking the blue paint to show shutoff valves and other determent due to the amount of labor needed. They do things right over there.
Question is " DO THEY"?