Written on the Wind

A new crop of giants is coming to the Garden State. Each specimen will stand up to 350 feet tall and measure 12 feet to 18 feet in diameter at its peak. These behemoths will bear fruit for more than 20 years. While those who farm them call them wind turbines, most people know them as windmills. The

In fact, if Brent Beerley, director of business development for Community Energy in Wayne, Pennsylvania, has his way, New Jersey will boast the first coastal wind farm in North America, with five turbines turning in Atlantic City. "That's our goal," Beerley says.

Community Energy is just one of the wind power companies- coming to New Jersey. Clipper Windpower in Goleta, California, has plans to build a $25 million wind farm on Scotts Mountain in Warren County. Also eyeing the state is Atlantic Renewable Energy of Richmond, Virginia, which is studying offshore sites.

Within a few years, dozens of windmills from the Highlands Region in Warren County in the north to Cape May in the south could be cranking out scores of megawatts. "The wind business is booming," says Paul Kerlinger, a wind power consultant based in Cape May Point. "We have a desperate need for clean power and it's a viable business. We're going to see more wind power development in the state." Beerley, 25, a 1999 graduate of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, is already a veteran of the wind industry. While still a student, he used an engineering and public policy program to work on a wind power and solar project in Malta. He subsequently managed the EnergyStar program at a manufacturing plant for Johnson & Johnson and then moved to the U.S. Department of Energy in Philadelphia where he ran a wind power assistance program.

Long the Grail for advocates of green power, wind turbines promise to tap a clean and renewable source of energy. They are already in use throughout the country, including sites in southwestern Pennsylvania that blow 63 million kilowatt hours into the midAtlantic power grid, which includes Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey.

Wind power has become increasingly popular as technology has brought its cost closer to that of conventional forms of energy like coal, which produces greenhouse gas emissions that have been blamed for global warming.

Conventional generation costs currently run about 3c per kilowatt hour, compared with about 6c for wind power.

If the cost of wind power is greater than that of conventional energy, it is also more predictable. "There is no price spike when it comes to wind energy," says Beerley. "A customer can visualize the cost of energy for a 15 to 20 year period. We can lock in a price for 20 years, which gives them some comfort."

Wind turbines can also generate problems. Windmills kill birds, a particular source of worry in New Jersey, which is part of the Atlantic flyway for migratory species. The rotors on a turbine can strike these birds as well as members of threatened or endangered species such as bald eagles, piping plovers and peregrine falcons. Critics of windmills also object to their impact on scenic views.

Nonetheless, wind power remains a coveted source of energy. "Whether it's considered ugly or something to be proud of, it's clean energy," says Jeanne Fox, president of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJBPU). "It doesn't pollute at all. That's something people should be proud of."

Armed with a $1.7 million grant from the NJBPU, Beerley and Community Energy plan to erect a $10 million wind farm at a sewage-treatment plant run by the Atlantic County Utilities Authority (ACUA) in Atlantic.

When completed, the farm will generate 7.5 megawatts, enough to meet the electricity needs of the sewage plant and some 2,000 homes.

"We like the idea of wind power," says Rick Wehrhan, ACUA project director. "It's one of the cleanest, if not the cleanest, forms of energy. If we can support something like this, that would be a good thing."

State grants are imperative for companies like Community Energy, since New Jersey ranks just 27th in the U.S. in terms of the strength and amount of wind available for energy generation. To be profitable, the wind power potential of a site must rate at least a three on a scale of one to seven. Sites under consideration in New Jersey rate at least a three.

"Anything in class three you look at very hard unless there is a subsidy available," says Kevin Rackstraw, director of project development at Clipper Windpower. "If it weren't for the state," adds Beerley, "we wouldn't be here."

Meanwhile, consultant Kerlinger is keenly aware of the bird-kill problem. A former director of the New Jersey Audubon Society's Cape May Bird Observatory, he and partner Dick Curry of McLean, Virginia, launched Curry &

Kerlinger five years ago to study possible windmill sites and pick those with the least impact on birds and other wildlife. The firm also helps companies design windmills whose operation will harm fewer birds.

Kerlinger has been studying the Atlantic City site for Community Energy. Each morning, his firm's workers walk around two 400-foot communications towers at the sewage treatment plant looking for dead birds. They also count the birds flying above the wind turbine site. Elsewhere, Kerlinger tracks bird kills at current wind farms. "We're not finding a lot of migrating birds killed by turbines," he says.

But Kerlinger notes that those farms are located inland. A study of coastal wind power sites in Europe found a high death rate for hawks and other raptors. This has caused the New Jersey office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Pleasantville some concern.

"Basically, when looking at a turbine project, as we would with any other project, we look at habitat disturbance," says Wendy Walsh, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist. "It's a sewage treatment plant, no habitat is affected, so the proposed location is a good one in that respect."

But Walsh says more study needs to be done at the site because peregrine falcons, piping plovers and bald eagles may nest within 10 miles of the plant. Moreover, within five miles of the proposed wind farm there are areas where migratory shore birds gather and herons breed.

At most sites in the US., the number of birds killed by individual windmills is none or a handful. Far more birds fly into buildings, get hit by cars or fall victim to household cats. According to the National Audubon Society, cats in the U.S. kill more than 100 million birds a year.

Much of the concern about birds stems from the heavy raptor kills at the first U.S. wind turbines built at Altamont Pass, California, in the early 1980s. Many birds of prey, some of them endangered species, fell victim to hundreds of relatively small and fastturning windmills there.

"The turbines have gotten much larger," says Brent Dehlsen, executive vice president at Clipper Windpower. "They have a slower rotation now and are spaced apart a lot more. There have been a few studies done showing the actual impact on bird populations. It's not as serious as people think it is."

Clipper wilt refer to those studies when seeking approval for its $25 million wind farm on Scotts Mountain, a prime spot for migratory-hawk watching. Scotts Mountain holds the state record for the most broadwing hawks, including red tail and red shoulder varieties, spotted in a single day. The total: 18,500.

"Broadwing hawks tend to migrate in large numbers;' says James Mershon, senior naturalist at Merrill Creek Reservoir on Scotts Mountain, which has been home to a bald eagle nest for the last six years. "They ride the warm air thermals."

Clipper Windpower's tentative plan calls for 14 200-foot windmills generating a total of 21 megawatts of electricity. That would be enough to light about 6,000 homes. The NJBPU will contribute $3.1 million toward the project if it wins local approval. That could require support from the communities of White and Harmony, two towns bisected by the 1,100-foot-high mountain ridge.

"They could put half-a-dozen [windmills] on my property if they want to," says James Hausamann, mayor of White Township. "I think they're kind of neat."

Hausamann, a retired pipe fitter who has worked in power plants throughout the region, has a peach orchard in Warren County and owns 87 acres on Scotts Mountain. He sees wind power as a welcome source of alternative energy, But he concedes that people who live in the valley along scenic Route 519 just below Scotts Mountain might argue that windmills would spoil the view.

Indeed, more people have objected to the impact of wind farms on the viewshed, as the surrounding landscape is called, than to the threat they present to birds. "Some people see them as kinetic art," Kerlinger says of windmills. "Other people hate them."

Aesthetic considerations have already ruled out many possible windmill sites in New Jersey. From the perspective of wind power potential, northwestern New Jersey's Kittatinny Ridge, where a stiff breeze usually blows, would seem an ideal place for windmills, It already bristles with radio, TV and cell-phone towers. But the Appalachian Trail runs along it and wind power companies fear the wrath of environmentalists.

"Those aren't battles I was willing to fight," says Clipper Windpower's Rackstraw. "I want the green community behind me rather than in front of me. I want to go where we're likely to have some support," Concurs Beerley:

"We're an environmentally driven company. We're very interested in siting our projects in a clean fashion." Also aware of the problem is Virginia's Atlantic Renewable Energy, which has a $300,000 NJBPU grant to study possible sites off the New Jersey coast from Sandy Hook to Cape May Point. When the company originally proposed a site off Island Beach State Park, the state encouraged it to examine other locations as well.

"It will be a broad study," says Theo de Wolff, the principal owner of Atlantic Renewable Energy. "Our objective is to identify areas where offshore wind power would be suitable and where we can develop a pilot project." Along with the visual and environmental impact, the company will study ocean depth and the cost of connecting to onshore transmission lines.

Meanwhile, Beerley and Community Energy could use their head start to build two or three New Jersey wind farms before other companies have completed their first ones in the state. Just last week Beerley met with officials of Springfield in Union County to propose siting a wind farm in an abandoned quarry. At a time of growing concern about the environment, Beerley says, the answer to the quest for clean energy is clearly blowing in the wind. WINDMILL WATCH

(1) Scotts Mountain Clipper Windpower received a $3.1 million state grant to build a 21-megawatt $25 million wind farm in Warren County. The estimated completion date is late 2004.

(2) Springfield A Community Energy wind farm is in the preliminary stages. It could be completed by 2005

(3) The Shore Atlantic Renewable Energy got $300,000 from the state to study the feasibility of a 25-megawatt offshore wind farm to be built between Sandy Hook and Cape May by 2006.

(4) Atlantic City Community Energy plans the first coastal wind farm in North America at a sewage plant run by the Atlantic County Utilities Authority. The 7.5megawatt $10 million station, to be built with a $1.7 million state grant, is to open in the second half of 2003.

(5) Cumberland County A Community Energy wind farm at a state facility is in early development. it could be built by 2004.