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General News: Black Rock Seeks Wind Turbine Permit
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| The Air Breeze wind turbine was assembled by sixth graders. |
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| The science center is proposing to put the turbine next to these solar panels. |
March 16, 2009
If you stand outside the Black Rock Science Center in Cornwall on a sunny day, you can feel the wind and sun on your face and hear the water flowing in a nearby stream. For William Schuster, the executive director of the Black Rock Forest Consortium, each of these elements provides the potential to harness energy that would reduce the cost of operating the science center buildings and free up resources for the non-profit’s scientific research.
Schuster’s latest proposal is a small wind turbine that he would like to erect on a hillside next to the solar panel pavilion with 32 photovoltaic panels that face the southern sky. He has been working with the Cornwall planning board to get permission to erect the wind turbine on a 29-foot tall pole and the town board wants to draft a new law that would regulate not just the Black Rock wind turbine but any individual property owner who may want to try to harness the wind.
Cornwall building inspector Gary Vinson says that the biggest concerns about a wind turbine is its impact of the neighbors. That includes the noise generated by the turbine as well as the position of the base so that if it fell, it would not harm any neighboring property.
The Black Rock wind turbine is a small one with three rotary blades that would generate 1 kilowatt of electricity, enough to power a computer and a sensor to monitor the amount of wind and value of what it produces. Excess electricity will be stored in batteries that could be used to power a number of different scientific experiments underway in the forest.
The wind turbine project is being conducted by a group of sixth grade students from the Manhattan Montessori school. The students come up to Black Rock once a week and have assembled the $700 turbine that now sits in the science center lobby. Their next step will be to conduct a balloon test, raising a balloon to the height of the turbine’s pole to see its visual impact on the landscape. Once the turbine is erected, the students will gather data on wind speed and power generation.
William Schuster says if the small turbine is successful he would like to explore a larger unit that could supplement the solar panels, which now provide about have of the science center’s electrical needs. He is also looking into the stream that flows outside the center to see if that can be tap into as well. The village of Cornwall-on-Hudson is also exploring a way to tap the hydro-power of its water supply lines that feed into the Black Rock water filter plant.
Schuster says the wind, solar and hydro projects are a perfect mix for an operation devoted to the study of nature and, based on the positive response he has received from the town planning board, he is optimistic that Cornwall will adopt a law regulating turbine use
Comments:
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Back to the future is a wonderful idea.
As I see it, here's the new math: Ours + Green = Good.
Before there was electricity, there were "old mill streams." For the most part, they're still there; let's put 'em to work.
And windmills too. We read recently that there now are wind-turbines that can support 300 homes each.
Wind and water. That's the direction we all should be sailing.
Jon Chase
Cornwall-on-Hudson
posted by Jon Chase on 03/16/09 at 11:32 AM
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there is poetry in the beauty of the self sustaining Earth
posted by Kate Benson on 03/19/09 at 9:56 PM
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