Windfall?* – Wind Energy in New Hampshire

In March last year I went skiing at Crotched Mountain, near Bennington, NH, with my son. It was a perfect day for skiing – the weather was mild, the sun was shining and, most importantly, the lift lines were short. A couple of times that day we took a breather at the top of the mountain to admire the view and we briefly considered the wind power potential of the site but I had no idea at that time that I was skiing at the site that was the birthplace of the wind energy industry.

In 1980 a company by the name of U.S. Windpower established the first wind farm in the world by erecting twenty 30 kW wind turbines on Crotched Mountain. The design was based on research and development work conducted by Professor William Heronemus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. For a variety of reasons, including unreliable equipment and poorly understood wind resources, the project was not a commercial success and was dismantled after a year, but the developer went on to set up wind farms in California which were not a commercial success either. Nevertheless, a lot was learned from these projects and failures and these early efforts were the genesis of the wind energy industry as we know it today. It is quite remarkable to consider, that starting with establishment of the Crotched Mountain operation in 1980, we have moved from an installed wind energy capacity of 0.6 MW from 20 turbines to approximately 282,000 MW of worldwide capacity from over 200,000 turbines in the space of about 30 years. In the process we have gone from wind turbines with 15 ft long blades powering 20 kW units to turbines with blades longer than 200 ft powering 7.5 MW units. This is an impressive advance in engineering technology and a testament to what we can accomplish when incentives and subsidies are available. As my students in the Franklin Pierce MBA in Energy and Sustainability Studies learn, successful energy development requires the combination of correct government policies, the correct technology and financial incentives.

After the Crotched Mountain project not much happened in NH wind-wise until 2008 when Iberdrola, the large renewable energy company based in Spain, established their first NH-based wind farm on the hilltop ridges near Lempster. Since then we have had two other wind farms established near Groton and Dixville Notch and there are a bunch more seeking permitting or in development.

The key reason that wind development has not taken off in a bigger way in New Hampshire is that we simply do not have the wind power potential that is present in other parts of the US. As you can see from the US 50 meter (165ft.) wind resource map below, most of the US wind resources lie in the center of the country, from Texas up to North Dakota. This is where the wind blows the hardest and most consistently and these are the choice areas for the establishment of large land-based wind farms.

 If we take a closer look at NH, we can use the 50 meter wind resource map shown below to examine where our winds blow the hardest. The areas of most interest are those highlighted in purple, red and blue. The high wind resources are towards the western side of the State and increase in power as we curve over to the north in the White Mountains area.

I have overlaid on this map the locations of the operating and proposed wind projects in New Hampshire so you can gauge where these operations are relative to the high wind resources and you can also assess where future projects might be sited. The table that follows provides the key for the locations shown on the map as well as information about the various operations.

The challenge with wind energy in NH is that, in order to harness the wind resources, we are forced to put wind turbines up at high elevations on mountain ridges. As a result there are wind turbines – 70 at last count - popping up on hilltops in New Hampshire which, according to your perspective (and location relative to the turbines), can either be the worst thing that ever happened to the wilderness of NH or part of necessary transition as we begin our move away from our dependence on fossil fuels. I do appreciate the argument that, because wind does not blow all the time, we always need a fossil fuel backup for these turbines. However, we should take into account that we are not breaking new ground and building new coal or natural gas power plants every time we put up a wind farm in the USA. What is happening is that, in the developed world, we are slowly ratcheting down the output from existing fossil fuel plants and reducing our output of greenhouse gases and other pollutants from these operations. Every ton of carbon dioxide that we do not emit is, to my mind, a good ton of carbon dioxide. By my estimate, the 282,000 MW of worldwide installed wind capacity led to ~740 million tonnes of carbon dioxide that we did not emit. I know this pales in comparison to the ~33 billion tonnes we likely emitted in 2012, but this is a start and every bit does help.

I also did some research at the Federal Electricity Regulatory Commission (FERC) website to see exactly how much power the three operating wind facilities are actually generating compared to their proposed output. One frequent condemnation of wind power is that the operations don't often measure up to their proposed output and therefore they are a waste of money and tax payer dollars created by subsidies and incentives. I wanted to see if that was the case and how the NH wind farms performed compared to their projections. One way of doing so is calculating the capacity factor, which is what I have done based on the FERC reports of energy sold by the various NH wind operations in 2012. If you recall from the I've Got the Power! post, the capacity factor is the ratio of the actual energy produced by a power plant to the theoretical amount that would have been produced over a year if the plant was operated 24 hours and 365 days of the year. The 2011 data from that post indicated that for the single wind farm in that set of data, the Lempster project owned by Iberdrola, the capacity factor was 0.314 (31.4%). In New England capacity factors for large-scale wind farms range from 0.15 to 0.35 with averages around 0.25.

The only two wind farms that operated throughout 2012 were the Lempster operation and the Granite Reliable Power facility near Dixville. The other operating plant, the Iberdrola Groton Wind facility, only started up in about October last year so there were very few energy sales and, as such, there were insufficient data to calculate capacity factors.
The table below shows their actual electricity production and the calculated capacity factors. I have also included the average prices for their electricity sales.

As you will note, the Lempster operation has a relatively good capacity factor compared to most NE wind projects but the Granite Reliable Power facility only has a capacity factor of 0.15 which is rather low, as is the price it is getting for its electricity.

The low output from the Granite Reliable Power wind farm is a bit of a puzzle. Based on the NH wind resource map I would have expected the higher wind speeds in the northern part of the State to translate into higher capacity factors. There are a number of reasons that energy generation numbers would be lower than expected, including

• Lower than estimated wind speeds
• Turbulent wind conditions
• Wind turbine mechanical problems
• Deliberate output reductions due to lack of demand for produced electricity

I have not been able to determine the actual cause for the low output but, considering that Granite Reliable Power sells directly into the ISO-New England electricity pool, demand, as well as the price for its generated electricity, are dependant on what other power plants are bidding. However, the wind farm has very low operating costs as they have no fuel costs, so I would have expected that they would always make the choice to deliver into the pool even at the lowest clearing price. Perhaps my understanding of the electrical markets is not clear and I look forward to being set straight by someone with a better knowledge of these markets. Regardless, if I was owner of this operation, I would be somewhat grumpy about this situation and envious of the performance and higher prices obtained by the Lempster operation which has a power purchase agreement with Public Services of New Hampshire to purchase all its output.

At the end of this year it will be interesting to compare the output and capacity factors of all three operating wind farms and particularly to compare the operations of the two Iberdola facilities. If I were the developer of the large North County Wind facility planned for Coos County, I would be taking a very careful look at the performance of the Granite Reliable wind project and double checking my energy and revenue projections.

The importance of wind energy in New Hampshire is growing as are the objections against further development. I am not sure how this will all shake out, but it is clear that wind energy in New Hampshire will not be a windfall* for all developers.

Until next time, remember to turn off the lights when you leave the room.

Mike Mooiman
Franklin Pierce University
mooimanm@franklinpierce.edu
6/2/13

(*Windfall – A fabulous tune by the group Son Volt which was a spinoff of the group Uncle Tupelo. The other Uncle Tupelo spin off was Wilco. Quite the pedigree. This week's challenge was picking the right "wind" song as there are so many to choose from - Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" was simply too obvious. Here is the link for Windfall – a song that makes you sad and hopeful all at the same time.)

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