Wizard's Corner #30,   Apr 9, 2008

Three points to report about: 

1.  in mid-April (that's less than a week from now) we U.S. taxpayers will be completing our "Form 1040", one way or another, and, sun theO as Plato used to say, sending it to its rightful destination, the IRS, with our accounting of taxes due to them.  It seems odd, but the program called 'CREB', or Clean Renewable Energy Bonds, is administered by this same IRS, due to their already funding public school buildings, and CREBS can be modeled on that financing pattern.   This program is intended to allow governmental or public entities to enjoy some financial support parallel to what the 'PTC' or Production Tax Credits provide to private-sector investors in renewables.   Hull's offshore project has applied for a modest sum under this program, and the early prospects look favorable.   Not that the bonding requires no capital repayment -- like other bonds, it does severely require this.   Town of Hull, with many other fiscal pressures coming to bear on it in 2008-2010, may struggle to meet this severely enforced payment schedule.   It is set according to a complex formula that few ordinary citizens (none of us here at Wizard's Corner) understand fully.   In any case, render_unto_Caesar is a 'large half' of a formula for April 15th.  Even lesser wizards like Phil Lemnios of Natick can grasp the seriousness of these matters.  So whatever is your index wizardry, don't forget your severely enforced payment deadlines !

2.  The U.S. State Department's website, 'America.gov' just a few weeks ago put up an article praising our Hull windpower projects.   See the link on this site's homepage.  We can't help enjoying this publicit, which we first found out about via the U.S. Embassy librarian in Sofia, Bulgaria. Snejana Yaneva.  Thanks, Sneja !   On the other hand, some of us at Wizards Corner were amazed that this U.S. story of a few weeks ago identifies a certain Massachusetts State agency for promoting renewables.   But there have been some signs that this state agency is "not long for this world", thus may well be defunct a year from today.  (Keep an eye on it, Sneja!)   

Here is a sign.   A major pair of wind and solar initiatives on Deer Island, directly across Boston Harbor from Hull and not 10 KM distant from our State Capitol building, was announced this week by our Governor's office.   But the Governor never mentioned this agency in his announcement.   How can this be ?  It is yet harder to explain, since that renewables agency reports to the the Governor's top appointee, his Energy officer, a man who reports directly to the Governor himself.    Maybe Washington is too far from Boston for these signs to make sense ?   Hey, even as far away as Hull (15 KM from him) and Deer Island we have trouble making sense of this paradoxical set of facts.   Is the Governor's agency not long for this world ?    In any case, puzzled though we are, we Wizards can spell out some of our favorite dreams.

What about this one ?  Boston Harbor will one day have "A string of pearls" to connect to Frederic Law Olmsted's well-know "Emerald Necklace", this being a series of green spaces surrounding the City of Boston roughly from Deer Island to its northeast to Hull to its southeast.    Now with the Governor announcing a set of wind-turbines up at the North end (Deer Island), and with our pair of peninsular turbines at the lower end of this same Harbor -- this "string of pearls" may be in its embryonic stage of life.  Please note that Quincy and its Nut Island intend to put up a Harbor Island commercial-scale turbine.   Quincy is a fine place to put another pearl out on that string of harbor islands.     Now F. L. Olmsted did things of national significance (Central Park in New York City was only one of them).   He strung precious bits of landscape architecture together, long before this was fashionable.  One might say, taking Al Gore's Nobel Prize as 'year One', Olmsted was a great figure in landscape architecture's 'prehistory'.   He is quoted as praising Boston for its care and attention of its Harbor and the islands here.  He might've had trouble with the syntax of the string 'America.gov'.    Nevermind, he saw a lot of the future, long before Al Gore was born.   

We may not be just dreaming idly here, since a young man named Craig Olmsted --a member of F.L. Olmsted's extended family -- is an engineering wizard of today, and he's helping put up wind turbines near Boston !    Why couldn't this youngster -- perhaps with help from Bluewater and Peter Mandelstam --  create a "landscape" all the way down past Block Island RI ?   Why not even as far as Hunts Point Park in New York City ?   Geologists tell us that lots of 'New England style' granite is there to give support.  Call it the 'Quincy effect', except not prehistoric Quincy now. 

Only dream on a bit further and young Olmsted reaches the East River, maybe even down to where Mayor Bloomberg can look out his City Hall window, towards the Manhattan Bridge, and see a pearl that has a linkage to our pearls and emeralds here in Boston.    A Green City, that's what Mayor is ereaming of.    He wants 20MW of locally generated Green power, as documents can prove.  Bloomberg's plaNYC includes this -- at Energy Initiative #11.   Do we not have ample evidence of the 'polymEtic' Bloomberg's being a major Wizard ?   We do.  He even preaches greenness to Beijing and their 2008 Olympics.  Also preaches it locally to NYC.   He could recruit young Peter Mandelstam, or not-so-young Barry Benepe to follow on pre-history's Alfred E. Smith and Robert Moses,  visionaries both.   So then (are you and your son stil reading, young P. Koenig ?)  we end up with a Bloomberg-visible piece of urban landscape architecture, a string of Pearls connecting Olmsted_South to Olmsted_North.  Easy to find that 20MW of green 'downstate" energy, before 2010.    Bloomberg's Beijing talk ends by being an NYC walk.

3.   Do you find these charts of "visitors" to our site mighty interesting ?   We sure do !   Why so many Aussies  ? Is it because their Labour Government last week announced ("Financial Times") a major national boost to their windpower ?   Why that many from Italy?    We have no guesses, though Milano is one smart city.  And what of Iran ?   Are the Iranians now thinking like our 'BP' colleagues, -- 'B(eyond) P(etroleum)' ?  

Wizard's Corner #29,   Feb 7, 2008

We've reviewed this concept "Capacity Factor" once or twice in these pages.   Time to go over the matter one more time -- this time introducing a few nuances.

Our preference here has regularly been to avoid nuances (such as scheduled downtime, such as "derating" our machines.)   This keeps the calculations simpler and also more completely transparent.   Transparency here means: it's not at all hard for you to double-check.  You can simply run your own calculation taking the output data we're relaying and figuring out how many total days --therefore total hours, at 24 hrs per day -- to take as the basis.

For example, looking backward from today [i.e. Feb 7, 2008], and counting all the days since the commissioning day of HW1, up to and including yesterday, the 6th.  That's the last day for which we have full information.  OK, it adds up to how many ?   Year2001 had 4 days only, 2002, 03, 05, 06 and 07 each had 365 (these five were each a non-LeapYear).   So adding those 4 to the 1825 of the five 'regular' years, you get 1829 days.   Now add each of the two extra 'irregulars', namely the 366 of 2004 and the 37 days from these Jan 1 - Feb of 2008, you arrive at the following sum:

        4 + 1825 + 366+37 days  =   2,232 = total days since Dec. 27, '01, commissioning of HW1

Now here's where some of the nuances and some of the 'extra assumptions' can  enter, if you want to let them enter.    You can try to anticipate such things as 'downtime (scheduled or unscheduled)', assumptions based upon a de-rating, or down-rating of one's expected (by nameplate estimates) power, &c.   Our scientific instincts take alarm here, as follows:  are we sure we'd "derate" our machines by the same percentage as (say) a Jim Gordon would do to his Cape Wind machines, or a Jay Cashman to his Buzzards Bay units, or an MMWEC to their Berkshire project ?    Or, just assuming someone near Execution Rocks at the west end of Long Island Sound were to study his wind and expected energy production -- which of these nuances should be built into that planning ?

Keeping it as we prefer -- uncomplicated -- lets us all stay scientific and on the same footing.  We here at Wizard's Corner take the following approach:  to guard against WishfulThinking (recall the proverbial horseman, the one who rides only If Wishes were Horses), we stay out of the nuances altogether.

Let's run an example, adhering to our preferred nuance-free approach.  ty across parts of one's own project, and also across projects.   Simply divide the total KWh's produced (by HW1) by the total days it's been online --    i.e.  divide the 9,488,217 by the 2,236, and we are all clear what we have, namely the average   KWh's per day.   (raw KWh's divided by total days gives  the average figure for KWh's-per-day).    One more step gets you to the average POWER of our actual output.    You must divide by the 24 hours, to find KWh's of energyper hour, by the time in hours.  This results in a figure for average   KW's -- the average power over the subject time period.    Note how it all chedks itself (a cardiologist skilled at electrical engineering once told me 'pay attention to the DIMENSIONS !')   In this case it's KWh's of energy divided by  h's  of time, and you get (avg.)  KW's of power -- right ?   That's  good science, either for a cardiologist or a chemistry teacher, -- or for anyone else of a scientific turn of mind.     

Only one thing then remains, before you arrive at our final number, our calculated 'CF'.   We're aiming to get a    percentage.    That is, we want the percentage of  maximum-possible-power which is represented by our formula's  average power.   This has the great merit of being a true, no-nonsense, nuance-free result, as valid in Boston Harbor as it is in New York City.   It tells us what percent of a hypothetical 'running full bore around the clock' -- what Capacity Factor we actually achieved since Day One.   We divide our observed actual average power (for today, Feb 7, 2008, -- and for HW1 --this came out to be 177.1 KW).  We used an un-adjusted 660 for the 'rated' power.  Exactly what the manufacturer claims our machine will do, at a maximum, when wind conditions are optimal (over the startup velocity, but under the maximum that causes the machine to go into self-protective shutdown).   Just like a 200 horsepower motor, or car, expects to put out a peak power of 200 'horses'  of power when running wide open, throttle to the floor. 

Our final answer to the   CF  calculation comes down to:

                                    177.1 KW/ 660 KW, = 0.2684 or 26.84%

Precisely the same calculations for HW2, and its to_date output (as of Feb. 7),   6,401,773 KWh's.   Its 640 days since commissioning  gets you   416.7 KW / 1800 KW = 0.2315 or    23.15 %

Now a fine thing about blocking any nuances, is how you can then proceed to make straighahead comparisons.  If Jim Gordon's CapeWind project says it will achieve a  40%  CF, and if its total rated power is 486 MW, then Jim Gordon expects   0.40 X 486,000 KW X (365 X 24) hrs of output energy in each year with no LeapYear's day in it.   If Berkshire Wind expects a 30% CF, and has 15,000 KW of rated power, its annual expectation will be   0.30 X 15,000 X (365 X 24)   39 million 400 thousand KWh's in Berkshire's case anda little over 1.7 billion KWh's in the Cape Wind case.    May they achieve their 30% and their 40% !   

Our situation in Hull today differs from these large or future projects in various ways, including:

1.  Cape Wind and Berkshire will have hub heights substantially higher than Hull's

2.  ocean breezes (Cape Wind) and mountaintop breezes (e.g. Berkshire's) are cooler, stronger

4.  these example projects are all 'virtual' or 'future' or 'projected' outputs, whereas Hull's are actual

5.  the CF calculations for Hull's project are transparent, simple, un-nuanced - thus easy for you to check.

Tune in for some extra wizardry relating to Dicaearchus and his little pseudo-Platonic dialogue 'Sisyphus', or 'Sophistry's Father'.  Some have thought Plato wrote that dialogue, but there are signs it was a polemical piece at the Early Academy -- aimed against Theophrastus of Eresos.  It differentiates deliberations about non-existent futures from deliberations of a plainer sort.  That's where Amphinomus (was this a nickname for Philip of Opus, the 'stasiarch' ?) did their hyper-orthodox disputing.   Their debates were hi-theoretical adventures in the near vicinity of "Mr. Outis", or "Mr. Nobody", also known as "Sisyphides" since his father was, or may have been, Sisyphus.   Much wizardry there at the Old Academy, around 360BC.    Proclus may have understood this better than we do.   But who knows, it may be that we of today may find ways to out-wizard Proclus.   Stephen MacKenna, a Sisyphides himself, would've delighted to translate our results into Gaelic, or into song.

Wizard's Corner #28,   Jan 17, 2008

Our statistics here at hullwind@org make sure to leave to the side 'spiders and robots' -- not counting them into the totals.  That is, they're left out of the reported 'hits' or 'visitors', or 'unique visitors'.   This is of course good science. 

Many of the robots are just testing to see if we're still here, are still having a robust number of hits, visits, &c.    It's clear to many of 'them', robots and you valued e-readers alike, that we're having our share of visits, who're downloading their share of kilo- and meta-bytes.  [A little linguistic aside -- have you ever heard the words 'wattage', 'kilowattage' or 'megawattage'?   Hey, you can hear them first right here.  Why not?   But maybe not so often the words 'bytage', 'kilobytage' or 'megabytage', right ?   Many of them offend our SpellCheck program.    Whatever your call them, our stats at hullwind.org report them to us.  

A logician, initials J.B., was always interested in extreme cases.  He asked me once if all these '-age' suffixed words, village, spillage, mileage, wordage, tonnage &c -- if this list would be complete without including the extreme case of 'age' pure and simple, suffixed to a nullity ?    I found him the example of Rene Descartes, using the French word 'aage'.    This pleased him, increased his smileage.   That was back in the 1970s, and he has since moved to Australia.  No harm done, so far as I know, to his ageage.]   

Here's a clip from our early-January 2008 report:

Wizard's Corner #27,   Oct 11, 2007

Try this out on your "I pay no heed to reports that are too ANECDOTAL" principle.  I assume it's your principle too, not just mine, OWC, unless I hear back to the contrary.    A man knocked on my door at 5:30 this afternoon, said he was interested in my signing a "contract" which would bind me and Consolidated Edison.  It would be favorable to my personal interests, he assured me (all this within the first 60 seconds of accepting my invitation to 'come right in').  What group or company did he represent, and what was his name, I reasonably asked him.  Could I have a copy of the contract he'd already put into my hand, asking for my signature ?   Bob acted reluctant to turn loose of a copy of the printed form and muttered something about wanting me to hand back the one copy he'd handed me -- after I signed it.  Mind you, less than 45 seconds had yet elapsed since he entered the front door of my Bronx residence.

Well his name was (so he said) Bob Woodside, a resident of Queens, and his company, said he, was "US Energy Savings".  How were my interests being promoted by my signing ?    I said something a bit sarcastic about his asking me for my signature before I'd read the contract, something about his allowing me less than twenty-seconds-worth of reading time.  In such a quick scan I might fail to spot clauses about my volunteering to do military service in Iraq in the coming few months.   Wizards can be wicked, you understand.  Bob may understand too, though I did not show him my Wizard badge.   No, Bob warbled reassuringly, there were no clauses about military service.   I proceeded directly to the business at hand, and asked about KWh's and CCF's of gas (ConEd markets both, here in the Bronx.)

Kilowatt-hours, he continued patiently -- ConEd would guarantee me an exemption from any rate-increases for the coming 10 years, above the figure printed "right here in the contract" (he was pointing, and the number did in fact read '15.9', with no further digits appended.  Well he wanted to see my most recent ConEd bill before he'd willingly answer that question.    Whilst I dug the bill out (mind you, not 3 minutes had yet elapsed since he stepped through my front door), I asked him if his 15.90 figure was "net of delivery charges -- that is, this is only the rate for the KWhs as the undelivered commodity, delivery charges to be added on top ?   Right, said Bob. 

He showed no sign of familiarity with the layout of my ConEd bill, when I produced it.  Naturally, I wondered that Bob hadn't yet seen many bills just like this, maybe dozens or scores of them, in the course of his work for the ConEd contractor.  My wondering this aloud was ample -- so loud as to fill my livingroom.

Anecdotal, you say ?   Yes, this would seem to be a classic specimen of the anecdotal, in the ordinary meaning of that word.  Etymologise it, though, and you get 'without "ekdosis".   Like the German word, 'unherausgegeben'.  This way it comes out meaning 'un-published' 'not given out [to the public]''.    From your vantage-point, Dear e-Reader, and since this story was 'published' here at Wizard's corner on 11 Oct 2007 -- it's not truly unpublished.     It would gain still more standing with you, and not fall subject to your principle ruling against the merely anecdotal if I were to publish the 1-866 phone number of his company.  Just ask, and I'll publish that too.

My ConEd charges for 'delivery' is public, part of their published tariffs.   Here in the Bronx, delivery charges now run 7.3898 cents/KWh.    Is this what my signature would be 'buying' me ?  I'd be able to buy a KWh for a figure somewhere near 23-and-a-quarter cents, provided delivery charges didn't go up, for the coming 10 years.   But Bob, what about my monthly Service Charges ?  Yes, those are also added on top, and are not covered under this contract.   I believed him.

Like the "core" rate of inflation, -- a few things are being left out of Bob's "15.9".   Robert Reich has suggested an 'Inner Core' index -- the core of the core.  This omits food, energy and your home mortgage.  I retained my politeness and personal decorum with Bob of Queens, and concessively counter-warbled, "ConEd has to look out for its interests too".   Some deal, you'll agree.    Did ConEd recently consolidate itself further by merging with Keyspan, I asked ?  This would make it like former Boston Edison, merged into NSTAR, merging itself in turn with former Boston Gas, renamed Keyspan.    Any guarantee they won't re-merge, say with WalMart, Home Depot and Google inside 10 years ?    Those early mergers, yes, said Bob, they happened.  

Does this not have the ring of the un-anecdotal, Dear Reader?  Thanks for your patience, and for your principle too.   I have not recently had any offers of a longterm mortage from 'Countrywide', except for the one I got yesterday from them.  They came e-knocking on my email's front door.  Should I open it ?  Would you ?

Update on the Aussie Question.  1.  the world's largest windfarm was announced last week -- proposed to be installed in Australia.   2.  no Aussie was hired by Hull Light, and their rank has fallen from their #2 rank here at HullWind.org, not even staying in our top 10, as unique visitors:

Wizard's Corner #26,  Sept 28, 2007

Hull Wind 2 is now within easy reach of its own 5-million KWh mark -- by the  time of this writing likely 10,000 KWh or more over.  We here at hullwind.org continue to be underinformed about any but 'estimated' readings of its output meter, sorrowfully for us.  There have been rumors around town, however, that a new Operations Manager is either already on duty or will be before Thanksgiving.

Meantime questions have arisen (reports came back from an August 'outreach' session) about the true 'CapacityFactor', or CF, of HW2.  Why should our reports reflect a figure so low as below-23% ?

One reliable reporter said he heard it there from a Hull official that HW2's true CF was:    29%.   This a true shame if an officer of our town published such a figure, despite this website's steadily and responsibly reporting to tens of thousands of site-visitors over recent months   -- quite different numbers.

Why do we at hullwind.org expect a CF figure several percentage points below that

of HW1, as of end of summer 2007 ?   There is a perfectly straightforward explanation: months like January in Hull normally deliver about triple the wind-energy resource that months like July deliver.  (South of the Equator it is likely to be the reverse.)  

In the case of our larger machine this means that, since it went online in early May of 2006, and much to its disadvantage as of September 2007, it has had only one season of January-like wind seasons behind its CF number, but two seasons of July-like winds.   HW1 by contrast, since it is now nearly 6 years old (2101 days since commissioning), has 6 of the strongest seasons balancing out its 6 of the weakest. 

Good science does not let itself be swayed at all (not by fear, not by favor) from reporting

data honestly.   By the way, we've wondered if 'sine ira et studio', the motto of 'Financial

Times', means something like 'without fear or favor' ?  Do a favor to your WikiComrades here at Wizard's

Corner, and inform us if you know.    Meantime, and getting back to the point about good science:  it is compelled by its nature to exclude all distortions of its data, -- 'wishful-thinking' or other.

We needn't make a point about General Petraeus needing to 'restate' his announced numbers.   Admiral Fallon is easily as much a military man as our General -- he's even his commander.   Of course he didn't use Latin, but used language you might expect of a high-ranking sailor.   The Admiral scolded the general:  let's have no distortions of the information or analysis -- nevermind what our boss might want to hear.   Science tells it like it is.

Wizard's Corner #25,  July 30, 2007

Is this "mid winter"?  Yes, if you're in Australia, it is.  The fact is that Australians have out_visited friends_of_USA by a factor of 20 or more this wintry month of July.  I mean this:  from July 1st (i.e. "early winter") through today, our nationality_based count of visitors to Hullwind.org looks this way:

Try this calculation:  add Canada to France to Great Britain, then see if Aussies don't outnumber this agglomerated set of friends BY NEARLY A FACTOR OF 10.   All of us are "English Speaking" (The French are proud of being able to say "Freedom Fries" without an accent.  Ask Pierre of LeRefuge.com if Mons. le Wizarde is not au point on this one.)  Maybe you have an explanation.  We don't.

Let's ask ourselves some questions.  Let's 'wiki' the matter.  Who knows, our next Operations Manager may turn out to be -- if the selection process stays honest, anyhow -- an Aussie !

Wizard's Corner #24,  July 6, 2007

We have had to rely on estimates for the output values of HW2 these past weeks -- and likely this will remain true for another month or so --since there has been some trouble with the remotely-read meter (on the 13.8KV side of its transformer).  This limitation happily only affects us on Fridays, and does not affect our HW1 reports at all, -- where the meters and our information flow is going smoothly. 

Today's figure for HW2 (July 6, 2007) is calculated based on HW1's output for that same period.  We assumed that the 24 hours of production on July 5 will be roughly the same -- using just HW1's CF for the same 24-hr period.   This meant setting the HW2 estimate to 17,800 KWh for this July 5th period.  We simply added that figure to our last available meter reading.  

Our WizCrnr staff is now operating at a reduced output level.  This is likely to remain true (for various reasons) until early September.   All the same, you our valued e-readers deserve a serious flow of info.   We'll do our best till the fall.  

We Americans sometimes forget about our standard-setting colleagues, the Europeans.   But within months (so our local forecasts have it) all of us here may have to raise our sights, whether we want to or not.   Just thinking about windenergy in particular, this means paying attention to standards of the Danish Energy Authority, and its publications.  Their November 2006 book entitled "Danish Offshore Wind" illustrates this gap between America and Europe vividly. 

See if you don't agree.  Are these not higher-than-American standards at the following website ?      click here

In any case, and back in our picocosmic WizCrnr, we'll do what we can to regain our strength.  Wna we'll also look to raising our own super-local standards.  Our favorite motto here is 'before Thanksgiving'.   It's like the proverbial "rich farmer"   He's proverbially a "next-year farmer".

Wizard's Corner #23,  June 19/20, 2007

Please click on the 'images' button on our homepage to see a shot taken last evening, -- HW2 with crane adjacent. 

This may be the right time and place to bring out a fundamental fact about  our  'NGO'  website, our C.A.R.E. organisation -- and their relation to the public entity (a department within Town of Hull), -- Hull Municipal Lighting Plant (HMLP for short).  We at hullwind.org are not now, and have never been, a part of Hull's town government.  Nor beholden to any subdivision of this. 

Our flow of information from the Town varies widely, and not always predictably.  It ranges from free flow of many forms of information, to a restricted flow, to a vigorous and determined shutting off of information.  Illustrative of the unpredictability (to us) was yesterday's event:  neither the Town Manager's office, nor HMLP nor any of the Selectboard, nor any other facet of our local government gave us any advance notice of this planned shut-down.  No "heads up" as we say in our non-Australian way of speaking -- about this scheduled repair.    The first we knew was when one of our wizards drove by the landfill yesterday where HW2 is sited.  Our operative noticed a crane adjacent, its boom extending up past the nacelle.   That was yesterday -- we promptly put up an image on our 'images' page -- last evening.

This leaves us today (no further info from Town Hall) needing to guess about various things:

(1) was this repair scheduled, and if so how far back was the schedule known by our colleagues at Town Hall?  (2)  the content of the repair:  does it follow up on the 'temporary' fix reported here WizCrnr ##14-16 ?

(3)  is there any prediction by Vestas or the Town, about when HW2 will be back in operation? 

[PS  as of 09:45 this morning, June 20th, HW2 was observed, by us, to be back in operation.  We can judge the dimensions of this event as follows.  Neither the hours of downtime (not much over 24 hours), nor the wind-energy-opportunity lost (some 5 MWh) -- was much of a burden.  Define a burden as an ekplExis in the sense of ps-Pl. Def 415e8.]

Remaining underinformed, whether in Hull's 'constricted-flow' or 'no-flow' mode, all we can do is supply you our best guesses on these and other questions.    Are there also questions about the procedure for selecting a new Operations Manager for HMLP ?  There are, but this is for a later discussion.

For a reader of your e-wit and e-intelligence, there will be (again, pardon us our non-Aussie jargon) a 'take-away'.   This namely: a vivid illustration of the opposition " SGO vs. NGO ".   Our organisation (Citizen Advocates for Renewable Energy, or C.A.R.E.) is a 'Non'.  Hull's town government and its departments illustrate the 'Sic'.  Today's updating of our homepage will be carrying a new disclaimer, reminding our e-visitors (Australian and other) that we here at   hullwind.org    are committed to remain on the 'Non' side of the divide.

Wizard's Corner #22,  June 13, 2007

How much energy is in a baker's dozen of megawatt-hours?  [Familiar definition:  baker's dozen is an ordinary dozen, with an 'extra 1' factored in, or added in.]    Hull's pair of turbines, as of today, have delivered one more than a dozen thousands of MWh's, in other words 13 thousand MWh's.  Today's MWh's, adding the total from HW1 to the total from HW2, have topped the 13,000 MWh mark.

The two factors (additive) in today's sum of MWh's, those from HW1 plus those from HW2, are   8,637,055  and 4,366,465 .    It's not so easy to count the number of days, since HW1 has been running  1994  and  HW2 has been running  407.   At any rate, this lump of energy, like a baker's dozen of edible consumables, has a market value.    Depending on which bakery you patronise, you can buy that much electrical energy for between 1.3 million and 2 million dollars.  That's assuming you buy each of its 13,003,520 KWh's for 10 cents, or 15 cents (apiece).   Here in Massachusetts today only a few retail customers can find 10-cent units.  Some of us have trouble finding them for 15 cents at the retail. 

You won't be surprised to hear, even if you don't follow the electricity markets, that even bulk buyers, like Hull Municipal Light or MMWEC, can't always find a 10 cent wholesale KWh.   Let us try to find one for 10 cents on a hot July or August afternoon, for example.  Naturally, wholesale buyers are also bracing for overall price increases.   Even for us bulk buyers, and even factoring out the hot summer afternoon prices -- a 15 cent KWh may soon look mighty appetizing.  We might be happy to pay you for 13 of them, even if you only delivered us 12 (baker upsidedown).

Have I left something out of account?   Yes, I've factored out the incentive payments, for our power's being wholly pollution-free.  From our point of view these are icing on the cake.  We have so far banked roughly $400,000 in incentive 'on-top' payments, and are under contract, so long as we continue to produce, to bring in another 2-million-plus dollars in the coming years, prior to 2015.   Won't Al Gore, Nobel Laureate and US President, be proud of us?  That's an incentive of another sort, which we're disciplining ourselves to factor out, -- at least for now. 

***********

News note:   Gloucester has passed a 'land-based' ordinance, favorable to windpower.   Notice here:

Wizard's Corner #21,  June 10, 2007

Question 1:  does the Wizard Bureau at hullwind.org have an 'operative' at the Amer Wind Energy Assoc meetings?  Short answer:   Yes.

Question 1a: Will this site have updated info, based on this operative's having been debriefed here in Hull?  Short answer:  Yes.

Question 2:  Will Hull Muni Light Plant have a new Operations Manager before September of 2007?  A good prospect that this will be so.  Today's issue [June 10] of The Boston *Globe* (in its 'Careers' section, p. 6) carried a notice of Hull Light's job opening, announced that applications are due by July 9, 2007.   For more info, have a look at Hull's town website:     click here .  

*************

Some updated stats. on HW1 and HW2 production:

A.  taking our pair of turbines in combination

The pair of turbines, in their aggregate total (1992+405) of days of generating time, since commissioning:

Twelve million Nine hundred eighty thousand or better -- a little fewer if you measure on the 'downstream' side of their respective transformers. 

B.  taking each turbine by itself

HW1        daily average (over the past 1992 days)  4,333 KWh's [would power one Danish home for a year].

HW2        daily average (over the past 405 days)  10,754 KWh's [would power one US household for a year]

Can Al Gore explain why Danish and US households differ so radically?   He can, and will one day soon.   An AP report late last week (June 7) told the world that 'Spain's most prestigious prize' was awarded to the man we surmise will become the next US president.  The award is Spain's 'Prince of Asturias' prize, based on promoting international cooperation.   AP goes on to note this about that award:  '[it is] considered by some to be a prelude to the Nobel Prize'.   Which is the source of guess 'Gore the next US President'. 

More soon about forecasting the future.   Ambrose Bierce wrote a parable about the future-divining man who, seeing one swallow, said 'hey, summer is here', and forthwith pawned his overcoat.  We can subaudibly hear Bierce-Epakouomenos wondering, 'But does one swallow make a summer?'  The parable ends, however:  it was in fact summer.  Chancy inference, yes; bad inference, no.

Wizard's Corner #20,  May 25, 2007

HW1 and HW2 continue in their quiet and productive ways.  Since last report we at hullwind.org have been fortunate to hear from Jill Cliburn of the APPA, and also to have achieved an improved format for our production statistics (Excel format).  As soon as we can muster the Wizard Power we will be carrying out more detailed and more industry-standard analyses of our data.  A certain lady whose code-name is ps.-Beatrice, -- or Kara --, may soon supply us the needed boost to our wizard-voltage.

Like Clemson University, with its newly announced plans to work on off-shore windpower a bit south of Cape Hatteras -- we will be sure to put our data and our analyses up on the web as quickly as we possibly can.  That's for you, O e-reader.  Your code-name might be "N. Theknow" or "Uncledave", as a certain website based in Fresno reports.  We might imagine an echo of these names up here in the NorthEast, like J. Quincy Public or W.V. Equine.   Sometimes our nation's southern and western states look up to us Northeasterners for guidance (U of South Carolina looked northward to U of Virginia, which in turn looked up to Harvard ; San Diego State looked east to Carnegie Mellon or M.I.T.). 

At other times, however it is NorthEast admiring South or West.  Two particulars of special relevance to hullwind.org:  (1)  the 209MW windfarm in West Texas, and the DOE decision to award TX rather than MA its funding for low-wind turbine blade research [decision still pending, as of this date].  That is likely to be Texas defeating Massachusetts.  Another example: Stanford's program in Computer Science often sets the standard for Yale or NYU.   Again, consider the collaboration of offshore wind engineers, at Clemson and Coastal Carolina U    These universities may soon be the envy of Hull and M.I.T., since these southern engineers intend to set a fast pace, and also set high standards of academic professionalism.  We up North will have all we can do to keep up with them.  See if you don't see a Southern Challenge here: click here

News note about today's Wall St Journal 'Gorilla' contest -- WSJ is struggling to identify the mystery investors wanting to pour billions of dollars into erecting a world-class energy factory of some sort in southeast South Dakota, buying up thousands of acres of cotton and soybean fields but remaining completely anonymous.    One of our wizard staff thought she came onto a clue.  She overheard one of the investors close to Mr. R.E. White speaking a language not far from the American dialect of English -- but different.  Our junior wizard reported to us yesterday (May 24):  "It sounded sorta like Australian, and the man seemed to be talking about wind turbines !"   See if this helps identify the Gorilla.

Wizard's Corner #19,  May 9, 2007

A tidbit from the wizardology archives.  You may have already known it, the diminutive 'Kuertli'.  A loving diminutive applied to him by a close familiar -- to Kurt Goedel.   There's published evidence.    It is doubtful, however, that Abraham Robinson (ne Robinsohn)  or Dana Scott or Rudy Rucker ever called him that.  

A draft letter from early 1971 handwritten by Goedel and intended for Robinson [who  knew at the time that 'Abbie', Goedel's handpicked successor, had just 3 years left in his severely shortened life ? ] was never sent.   Rather, the letter was published in Goedel's Nachlass.   Now Goedel used a non-European way of expressing the date in that MS:  mm.dd.yyyy.    Yet he was himself plenty European, as you know.  Kuertli the Austrian.    So we might expect his hand to write, out of habit or tradition,  in the dd.mm.yyyy format.   Possibly he thought it affected to write the European mode, being now a Princeton person ?  In any case, and wizardologists please take note, his hand in fact encoded it in the Americanised format there.   A good example to follow.

Newsnote from the grapevine:   at least five of us are in the market for 're-manufactured' hardware, comparable to the Norwind 46 -- but much more 'experienced'.   Tens or hundreds of thousands of generating-hours of service behind them.   Installed in California or in Texas perhaps.  I won't say more about who these 5 are.  This much for now: we all want to find sites in Eastern Massachusetts to install one or more such machines, we are none of us engineers by training, we have all studied the 'RECs' market, and (although we don't like saying it in mixed company) we know what the words 'anno' and 'Net Present Value' mean. 

Two of us have our own personal crystal ball, which lets us do remarkably precise prognostications (recall the haff-untrustworthy, hahf-trustworthy method  of Capacity Factor).   On some date before Al Gore wins nomination to be our next President -- our agreeing devices have told us -- the Locational Marginal Prices in eastern Mass. will make at least a half-dozen installations here fiscally irresistable.  All of these installations will occur east of Worcester. 

If not, blame our respective crystal ball devices, don't blame us.  Neither of us is in communication with former World Bank officer Paul Wolfowitz.   But he was valuable material to test our forecasting on.

Wizard's Corner #18,  30 April 2007

1.  HW2's energy output stood, as of 01:00 this morning (our FAX machine received this then) at

                       4,000,966 (hulleleuia !)

2.   Is this a jarring number, the jolt being caused by some misalignment with our expectations ?  A philologist I know has a somewhat compounded criterion.   He looks to avoid the 'prognostische Anstoesse' where actual data turn out to mismatch prognostications, thus producing an 'Antoss' or 'jolt' to the observant philologist.   The true road will aspire to be free from bumps, or "level in front".  Ontogeny, he may have once said, either does or should recapitulate philology, the ontic and the true being level in front.

"If we want to do some prognosticating toward the 4 May 2007 date when HW2 will have had a full 365 consecutive days, we are well advised to assume an average CF for this machine -- just over this 168 day stretch of future time -- somewhere very near 34.5%.  Do note this down, and see if we arrive at an overall CF as of next May 4 (predicted here and now) right near 27%.  [Please don't report us to Dicaearchus, the friend of Plato who said planning for futures as if they were something really known is foolish, the future itself being -- as of now -- the very picture of non-entity!]"  

The above is excerpted from WizCrnr #11 [dated 18 Nov 2006].   The idea then was to apply that trusty tool of wind-wizardry, ' Capacity Factor'.  It is the always-trustworthy way of expressing one's forecasts -- these latter often-untrustworthy -- of future production from a given piece of installed hardware.  The prognostication back then, some 168 days ago now, was that "as of next May 4 [2007]" HW2 would be expected to have moved its CF briskly upward from its then-current value, namely 19.4 %.  But how far upward?  Our prognosis, recorded then was based on forecasting CF = 34.5% for the "stretch of future time" between (a) that November day in 2006 and (b) the now-not-distant date May 3, 2007.     The now expected modest further climb in the coming 2 days [comparable to a hitter in baseball turning in a 2-day average of .300] projects to an approximate 4,010,000 KWh's total production for year-one.  And it would/will put the CF for this machine a bit under 26 %.

3.  Now please don't put down our CF-Wizard if he appears to indulge in some 20-20 hindsight [you might see us saying "any plausible hindsight-adjustment is allowed, if it save our forecasts, keep our data and our prognostications level in front " !].   Here's a suggestion, based on a bit of what-if thinking.   Recall that period of Zero production for HW2 during a 10-day period, alas it occurred right at the peak season for strong-cold winds.  It occurred, and was reported in these pages, the final week of calendar 2006 and the first week of 2007.  This was a time when HW1 was humming at a CF of 50% or so.  [some further research could make this more precise, but this isn't needed here in what-if-land].    HW2 was temporarily down, due to an overheated component in its transformer.  For about 10 days it scored a Zero for output energy.  

What if we add in the rather calculable production HW2 lost in that particular period of its first year of production ?    We project a little over 200,000 KWh's of energy lost during this down-time.  (Hard on us to have lost 10 days of peak-wind days in a machine's first year.  To compare:  HW1 lost a week or so in August of 2004 to permit replacements of its generator and gearbox.   This lost time was purposely slotted into the predictably lowest-wind segment of the year, and HW1 had already produced, almost continuously, over 3.5 years of output.)  Now coming back to HW2 and its lost production last January:  using our virtual-CF , i.e. one that gets this 'iffy' boost, which we can take as in the range of 45% to 50%, we arrive at approximately 200,000 of lost KWh's.   The winds blowing by our landfill and not producing energy were like the 'water over the dam' at a hydropower plant, no energy harvested but a noticeable amount going by and catching our notice.

Yes, this calculation is a kind of 'wishful IF' form of thinking, like what gets the proverbial beggar a horse to ride on, -- if he just wishes to ride. 

That extra 200,000 KWh's of 'CODEC- restored' energy [ask Philippe Charles to explain the word CODEC] would make our CF calculation come out, near 26.6.   Some horse: not far from our forecasted  '270 hitter'.   From an industry point of view there's nothing disappointing about that average output.  We can't all be like the man who lent his name to the Ted Williams Tunnel, disappointed if he went a year much under 400.   [Margo Guda of the Fundashon Antiyano pa Energia in Curaçao took offense when someone I know said to her "show me the man or woman who brags about a windfarm with a CF over 50%, and I'll show you a liar."  Margo's 12 MW windfarm turned in a 3-year performance over 60%, -- reason enough for her to take offense.  I apologised.]

4.  Here's a bit of extra grist for our calculated mills.    A certain 15MW project in the Berkshires has convinced MMWEC that it will average better than 315.  Now this is like Ms. Guda's, this is a team batting average, in this case 10 machines, each rated at 1.5MW.  [MMWEC of course has its own department of Wind-Wizards.   Is one of them named RB?  No, RB used to be at MMWEC, but has moved to NE-ISO, taking his wizardry with him.  Is one named ML?  Possibly so.]

These proficient wizards run their own CF calculations as of course.  It's only rarely the final data turn out to mismatch their prognostics.  MMWEC has gone on record as thinking their 15MW wind-farm out near the NY State border (near town of Hancock), -- not yet online -- will have a 'team batting average' over 315.  That's like having 2 Ted Williams's and several hitters not dragging along much below 290.   Almost nobody on the team should be permitted to hit under 280 in any given year. 

Do try your own wizardry on this puzzle, Dear E-reader.  You will be matching wits with MMWEC's wizards if you do.  Try multiplying 15 MW times 8760 hrs [their first year won't likely have a Leap-Year's worth of extra hours].  Then multiply the resulting product by 0.315.  That has MMWEC harvesting a little less than 41.5 MWh of energy in their first year from that 15 MW farm.  They aren't betting the farm on such a harvest, of course.  Good wizards and good farmers know how unlevel the road can be, actual harvests mismatching what they'd quite reasonably forecast.  My same philologist friend used to recite the ancient proverb about the rich farmer (the 'geOrgos plousios').     "This farmer standing before you is wealthy, you say?  Well maybe, but me the wealthy one -- that's next year."

(see further, the prognostication in WizCrnr #12, of 28 Dec 06, end of par. 1.  You there find a refreshed prognostication, trying to make an allowance for the missing production from that downtime).

Wizard's Corner #17,  20 February 2007

Great news !  HW1 has surpassed the 8-million KWh mark, since our homepage last put up data.  Hulleleuia, as our Cambridge friend is fond of saying. 

Welcome to our MVTV friends !  Your visits here are always welcome, but your progressive ideas about convincing "political leaders" to endorse windpower -- that makes you all the more welcome.

Please note the smart upward jump in the 'CF' of HW2, which now stands at 22.9%.  It has added 271,745 KWh's since our last posting (on Feb 8).  That's the same as 271.7-plus MWh's.

Let's do a bit of counting-our-NewEngland-pennies (in the spirit of Poor Richard):  suppose, which is a true supposition, that Hull has been earning $50 + $45 + $19 just in the 'bonus points' for our green Megawatthours of output this past 12 days.   That's adding the three pat-us-on-the-back sources Harvard U, MassEnergy, USDept of Energy.  Here's how this adds up for this mid-February period: HW1 has produced 109.9 MWh's and HW2 has produced 271.7 MWh's in this 12-day period in early 2007.   That's a lot of clean-green energy to brag about, just in a 12-day period.  [A household of 4 standardly consumes less than that over a 60-year period !]   

We anticipate payments from each of our three green-energy supporters as follows.  US Dept of Energy pays us $19/MWh in 'renewable energy production incentive' revenue.  Thus you have DOE at $19 X 381.6 = $7,632 for our past 12 days.  Then add in Harvard's payment to us for just HW2's output : $50 X 271.7 = 13,585.  Finally add in the MassEnergy payments for the HW1 component:  $45 X 109.9 = 4,945.  So our MassEnergy+Harvard+DOE revenue this past 12 days is expected to total a little over $26,000.  Putting it another way, the past two weeks' bonus (i.e. green-tag) revenue from our turbines will nearly cover their maintenance&warrantee contract costs -- for the entire year !  

But this isn't the half of it.  What was the 'underlying commodity' worth to our Light Dept here?  What will our Light Dept be billing us -- those of us here in Hull who have electric meters ?   Well each MWh unit of energy, billed today at this or that meter in town (Wizard of course pays this rate cheerfully) brings our Light Dept $125.   That's the same thing as a rate of 12.5 cents/KWh.   So the revenue from the 'raw electric energy', -- the energy that you can think of as 'underlying' that lovely green canopy of bonus revenue -- this additional revenue will be    381.6MWh X $125 =$47,700.   So the total revenue from this short period is enough to pay insurance and other overhead costs, and leave a serious sum to put toward capital cost, and its overhead.

Isn't there a NewEngland-form (frugality-based) argument to be made here?  We can have our Citizen Poor Richard saying "a Megawatthour produced is more than a penny earned -- it comes to some two hundred dollars, when the bonus points are counted in ".  Our frugal NewEnglander can then approach his or her political leader (on or off The Islands) and say:  "Your constituents can easily follow my citizen-reasoning here.  So it won't be just Citizen Richard, but my spouse and many of our friends who will likely cast our ballots for you if you support our frugal position.   A healthy, clean source of energy such as this -- if you can help us to harvest this crop, you're likely to harvest our votes in the fall.   As the MVTV show pointed out there are years or decades of revenue for our town's treasuries, quite likely.  And they quite rightly said 'it's an inexhaustible resource'. "

Wizard's Corner #16,  7 February 2007

A report from the Vestas maintenance crew has just come in, identifying the short period of shutdown as due to the cold weather.  The nose-cone has its own controller, which stops functioning if temps inside the cone fall below a certain lower limit.  Re-starting then remains a problem, until the ambient temperatures rise to the critical level.  As you'll recall, the maintenance work is covered by Hull's contract, so labor costs are not assessed.  The only losses are the 'water-over-the-dam', as we may call it, drawing from hydropower lingo.  Wind whistling by rather than turning our rotor. 

The past 4 days (i.e. Feb 3, 4, 5 and 6) have produced fine results, Feb3=1000KW avg, Feb4=810 KW avg, Feb5=1630 KW avg, Feb6=880 KW avg.   This means a consecutive run of 96 hrs at an average power of 1080 KW, or a local-to-this-period CF of 60.0 % [!]   'Windy and cold' say the weather people, not easy to tolerate; but we reply, cold-dense winds moving at high speeds -- while plenty chilly for us humans -- produce lots of power here in Hull.   Over 20% of our total town's consumption over that period (we estimate) were 'carried' by our pair of windmills -- with our little Hull Wind 2.5 sometimes reaching up past its 'rated' power level.  Our little guy was clocked up past 2.5 KW on our remote measuring device Tuesday the 6th, mid-afternoon.   Its nominal rating?   1.8 KW !  

Wizard's Corner #15,  28 January 2007, 9 AM

Update:  at an hour sometime before dawn today HW2 became available again, and before 8 AM today the wind had  come up past the minimum for it to generate.  Good news this !   This also means its just-ended period of 'unavailability' was under two days.    We'll do comparisons of our performance to industry standards for availability (95+ percent is a rule of thumb).   In this particular measurement, HW2 will need to struggle in the coming months -- but HW1 has so far kept itself comfortably above this level over its 5-year total time.  We'll have some more detailed reporting here in the coming weeks, when the precise data becomes available.

Wizard's Corner #14,  27 January 2007, 11:05 AM local time

Late-breaking news.  Yesterday (the 26th) at 10 AM, Hull Wind 2 shut itself down.  Early on a Friday is about the most awkward of timing for two reasons (a case of "awkwardness X 2").  Nature was supplying us -- and older brother HW1, which is working fine -- with strong winds and good cold dense air masses, but also our offices at Hull Light are closed all day Fri-Sat-Sun.  Nevertheless, Operations Manager John Murdock was on the case yesterday, and called in a service order to Vestas at once.  As of now (11 AM the 27th) we're awaiting their repair technicians. 

This particular 'now' has an extra significance, being an hour ahead of our 'Drowned Hogs' event on Nantasket Beach.  This is Hull's rendition of the "Groundhog's Day" magical causality rituals.   We invite volunteers -- otherwise rational souls --  to immerse their bodies in our near-freezing Nantasket Beach waters.  Optimism X 2 here:  (1) magically causing the sun and its warmth to make a turn-around and (2) selling tickets to our linked festival, the annual Chowder-Fest.   Proceeds from this very warming festival go 100% to a nonprofit that helps those in need, Wellspring.  Word is that tickets have sold well.   Warm hearts from Hingham are coming over.

We're hoping to have HW2 back up by dusk today.  This is just cold science and technology at work, no magical or other mysterious causality. 

Stay tuned for updates, and some further calculations of the techie parameter, 'availability', for each of our two machines, HW1 and HW2.  The first of these is running fine as of this moment.   We hope to have this update ready by Monday afternoon (1/29).

Wizard's Corner #13.5,  11 January 2007

Try this, without using your 'pocket calculator':   add 7,785,040 (KWh) to 2, 240,215 (KWh).  Notice, you couldn't resist testing out a left-to-right way of adding, rather than dutifully doing those 'carry the One', &c.  That's how you and your calculator are different -- it only goes one way.

At last report, our pair of turbines had put out a total of 9,962,417 KWh, some 37,500 or so under the ten-million mark.  Today's report is something else again.  We hit the 10-million this week.  I recall our celebration at Bridgeman's restaurant, on the 5th of March 2005.  Back in spring of 2005 someone offered a champagne toast "Hey, our 5 million mark is exciting -- imagine how excited we'll be when we hit 10 million !"   Words to that effect.  

But look how long it took to reach that 5-million mark -- 1164 days.  The second 5 million took just 677 days -- of course 254 of these days saw both machines running, including our new more-double capacity machine !   

Yes, let's not overlook 'bumps in the road'.   We've had 16 days of down time on HW2, all of them late last year. We have a severe policy here, severe and scientific:  'no mercy'.   We calculate CF's as if down-time could never occur.  Since things can't go wrong, score them so they hurt your CF at the max.  Invented here in Hull:  Humpty Murphy. 

HW1 has had a total of some 13 days of unavailability -- 10 for warranteed exchange of gearbox and generator and another 3 to replace a lightning-arrestor part after a summer lightning storm in spring of 2006.    But put it all together now:  We've had full 'availability' from our machines on all-but-23-days.  The basis is 1841 + 254 days.  So our merciless way of calculating gives us right near 99% average 'availability'   Check it out -- you probably don't need to use your pocket calculator here either, and you can indulge in left-to-right arithmetic again.   Humpty meets switch-back.  Invented in Hull, where almost nothing is straightforward.  Ask Phil Lemnios, our returning Wizard of Hull.

Wizard's Corner #13.0,  8 January 2007

Hurray !  The Vestas repair crew was here the first two working days in the new year, and got us back up and running -- at 100% of its previous level of functioning -- early in the morning on Friday, 5 January.   They did repairs on the insulation immediately adjacent to one of the 'taps' on the in-the-nacelle transformer.   Our replacement transformer is on order, and will be shipped from Denmark (we estimate) sometime in the coming month or two.  To be installed when the days are longer.  Temps may be warmer too, though those record-breaking highs we've seen recently helped make the repairs easier.  [In the bigger picture, of course, global warming is a problem for the whole extended family.  HW2 and HW1 are doing their part in remedying this.  And we look forward to HW3 - HW6 doing still more of this helpful work.]  Meantime our full functioning HW2 is doing its gentle, quiet delivery.   Effective too.

Maybe you'll enjoy joining me in savoring these following particulars: HW2's first hour back in service it averaged 1440 KW (i.e. 1.44 MW) of output power.  Then Saturday morning (the 6th) it never scored under 1 MW from 2 AM till noon, the series of hourly averages reading as follows:   2-3 AM  1.11 MW  3-4 AM 1.10 MW, followed by 1.12, 1.14, 1.23, 1.22, 1.12, 1.15, 1,55 [11.7 m/s windspeeds during the hour 10-11 AM], 1.17 (arriving at noon on the 6th).  

More info soon.  I hope to be able to report more details on windspeeds, hourly energy output, wind-directions; it's just a question of getting the output in suitably tidy (=electronic) form, and getting set up to relay it to you.  More info to more folks -- like you right there -- is a happy wizard here.  I'm working on getting set up. 

Just today we got a copy of a special windpower Zoning Bylaw in Fairhaven.  It's their Zoning Bylaw Chapt 198-29.5 and has the title "Wind Energy Facilities".    Have a look.  You can search their pdf for '29.5', at :

http://www.fairhaven-ma.gov/Zoning_By_Law_5_6_06(new).pdf

Quite likely Gov. Patrick and his new energy cabinet officer Mr. Bowles know other towns or cities alongside Scituate and Fairhaven with comparable bylaws in place.  Cape Light Compact is working on a model by-law, but we do not know of its adoption as of yet.  Do let us know if you have more info in this line, and we'll relay it via this website.

Wizard's Corner #12,  28 December 2006

Alas, HW2 has come up with some trouble (overheating) in one of the three modules in its up-in-the-air transformer.   The Vestas maintenance/warranty staff are on the case.  They've already placed an order for a replacement module, and are planning to install an interim fix in the coming week, while we await the full-scale replacement.   Even as of early today, the 28th, the machine's Capacity Factor has remained above the 20 % mark.  If we're not unlucky in the coming week, we'll likely build that magic number higher by next May 4th, the machine's first birthday.  We're still hopeful it'll turn in a first-year  CF  rating 'right near 27%'.  Like a hitter looking to bat .270 for the full year.  Time will tell. 

There will of course not be costs to the town or to Hull Light for either the repair work or the replacement part.  It's under warranty that covers these.  Nonetheless, we'll be plenty happy to see the spinner resume its graceful and gentle rotation.  Won't you?   Stay tuned for further updates, shortly after New Year's Day.

Wizard's Corner #11,  18 November 2006

At a talk in Bourne (Upper Cape Tech), I included this point about the federal tax-deductibility to anyone filing the trusty old Form 1040.  I was talking about deducting any voluntary contribution, purchasing Renewable Energy Certificates, during calendar 2006.  -- Yes, it goes on Schedule A, I said, and Yes, you include it among your listing of Charitable Donations there.  Many in my audience raised their hands when I asked them (teasing, of course)   "how many of you remember the Form 1040, and its Schedule A, and the line for charitable contributions?".  I might as well have asked a rider on the Green Line of MBTA 'does anyone know the way from the Kenmore Square stop to Fenway park?', or 'has anyone heard of the World Champion Boston Red Sox'?

Our aim at Hull Light was to have Hull Wind 2 up and running by Thanksgiving of 2005.  That was not to be, but it had already been spinning and generating robust quantities of energy and capacity for 68 days by the time we held our celebratory Ribboncutting on July 22, 2006.  As of today, 197 days after going online on May 4, 2006 HW2 has produced more energy than HW1 had done in its entire first year.  And this was in the low-wind part of the year.   But we must be fair to both, if we set up a comparison between them.

We require it of ourselves to make any of our comparisons clearly and scientifically (wizard work demands nothing less).  We need to maintain rigor and fairness in our comparisons of production(s) at HW1 and HW2.  The good concept 'Capacity Factor' does much of the needed controlling here:  only compare a 660 KW machine with an 1800 KW machine after factoring in a discounting or scaling ratio of 660:1800.  Further, don't allow yourself to compare a May-November stretch of run-time to a stretch that goes round-the-calendar for nearly a full 5 years.  As of today, the CF of HW1 stands at 26.5 (so to be reported on our Homepage), and that for HW2 stands at 19.4. 

If we want to do some prognosticating toward the 4 May 2007 date when HW2 will have had a full 365 consecutive days, we are well advised to assume an average CF for this machine -- just over this 168 day stretch of future time -- somewhere very near 34.5%.  Do note this down, and see if we arrive at an overall CF as of next May 4 (predicted here and now) right near 27%.  [Please don't report us to Dicaearchus, the friend of Plato who said planning for futures as if they were something really known is foolish, the future itself being -- as of now -- the very picture of non-entity!]. 

National recognition came yet again to us in Hull when this month's annual awards were announced from US Dept of Energy and the American Public Power Association.  Hull sent a representative to San Antonio in early November to bring home the APPA plaque.  Hull beat out finalist Sacramento Muni Utility District (SMUD), in a run-off that brings us as much pride as the Sox defeating the Yankees.  Not that Sacto is Evil or Imperial, just that they have been national leaders for decades (see the heroic stature they have in the John O'Connor & Dan Berman book, "Who Owns the Sun?"). You expect SMUD to be "10 games in front at All-Star break", unless some upstarts from the greater Fenway region challenge them successfully.  SMUD had as its chief executive the distinguished energy expert and renewables champion S. David Freeman. [see our Wind News page, 18 Nov 06 entry.]

This same man David Freeman is now starring in the documentary movie "Who Killed the Electric Car?".  He had presided over the decommissioning, decades ago now, of many of the TVA's nuclear reactors.  He was part of the energy Brains Trust at the Jimmy Carter White House.  He had a fleet of 28 electric vehicles running at SMUD 10 years ago now.  Just watch, California, with SMUD in the lead, will probably orchestrate the national swing back to such intelligent behavior, starting soon. There is politics here, of course, and Freeman has been wily about this.  Friendly to Jimmy Carter, Mario Cuomo and Al Gore -- but deeply unfriendly to the Bush-Cheney 'Oiligarchs'.  He once said to an Audubon publication:  "I want to put Exxon out of business".   Imagine that.

In Quincy the suggestion has come up that they name their first two windturbines 'John' and 'Abigail', and set them to competing.  If things go well at one of the three leading locations in Quincy, QW1 will be up and running by summer of 2007, and QW2 (and maybe QW3 also?) before Thanksgiving of 2008.  This way Quincy beats out Hingham, Cohasset, Scituate and Plymouth, to say nothing of wind-rich Eastham and Provincetown.  Both Abigail and John will be in a position to say to all these would-be competitors:  "you have to raise your CF's above Zero, and do this soon, or you'll bring discredit on our slow-moving Commonwealth."   After all, our northeast leaders would never have felt easy about Texas being our Nation's leader in windpower generation, even if they could accept California's being #2.  Massachusetts stands, as of this writing, in the lowest quartile of the USA's states in this.  Also, the bottom in spending on public higher education; who knows, these two may be correlated ?   Perhaps the new Patrick-Murray team will set us on the road to remedying all this. 

It was just announced yesterday that Lt.-Governor Elect Tim Murray has been awarded the 'most valuable player' award by Mass Energy, our Commonwealth's leading force in stimulating renewables.  Bravo Murray, Bravo Patrick.  If he doesn't watch out, Gov. Patrick will be next year's winner of this award !

Wizard’s Corner #10, 4 April 2005

A little abstract thought on Wizardry Itself. Pythagoras is the patron saint of us wizards. Well, fellow devotees, our favorite insight drawn from that ancient wizard may be the pair of ideas (1) the power of any of us human wizards is ridiculously small, and (2) we must continually go public with illustrations of this near-total powerlessness, especially when we come to find out we've been dead wrong. Newton, our modern hero, wrote very late in his life: "[I have been] only a boy playing on the seashore. . .now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." Can't you imagine an inspired man in Cambridge today writing something similar? For example the wizard of huge accomplishments Len Tower? I can imagine this. Kurt Keville can also, who chances to know where Len is physically.

Speaking for myself now, -- a man gigawatts lower in rated wizard-power than any of these gurus or heroes: "I now go public in declaring for myself a serious unwisdom, -- when I scolded [in Wizard's Corner #9] the Mass. Renewable Energy Trust for being unable to let us federal taxpayers deduct purchases of MassEnergy's Renewable Energy Certificates. I was entirely wrong in claiming that last June." The fact is that we are now entitled to such a deduction, - on our IRS Form 1040, Schedule A (Charitable Contributions). The proof: see the following letter, with an April 2005 taxpayer clicking his heels in delight. You may want to email Mass Energy or the MTC to ask about your own 2004 purchases. Meantime, praises to the MTC, and to Mass Energy -- including from this unwise Wizard !

News about Hull Wind 2: There is every likelihood that we in Hull will be installing our second turbine, -- this one a 1.8 MW Vestas V-80 -- before Thanksgiving. That's their machine with an 80-meter rotor diameter. We will get it up by Thanksgiving if we make a self-imposed deadline of April 14, 2005 to send Vestas our downpayment [we have this in the bank now], along with our formal "notice to proceed" on the V-80 we ordered last summer.

Where, you ask? Some colleagues from Hingham asked the same question, and retained a lawyer to challenge our right to site it atop our landfill adjacent to Geo. Washington Blvd. Their challenge did not succeed in blocking us, as an official letter from Romney's EOEA Secretary Herzfelder of 18 March 2005 confirmed decisively. In Europe [where nobody shudders at the word "Kyoto"] there are many installations of precisely this sort, all performing nicely, designed by these same people. This seems to be what convinced the EOEA that it is a sound and safe design, so they had no reason to perform any further review.

I won't attach a full graphic copy of that official letter, but it is publicly available now, and its top part looks exactly like this:

How does one manage the engineering, standing a multi-ton piece of gently vibrating hardware atop a capped landfill? It will appear to rest on the crest of that soft agglomeration of waste material, but will not really depend on its support. More than 70 tubular shafts, precisely specified by experienced engineers in Denmark, will be placed [carefully of course] all the way down to bedrock, thus not requiring any real support from the actual landfill material. We did the borings, and the good New England granite is down there to make the device stand firm and proud.

Maybe we're jumping to conclusions (careful, Mr. Wizard !), but it looks to us like Scituate and Hingham right near Hull, Quincy not so far away - and New Bedford or Manomet or Mattapoissett-Marion-Rochester further away -- might also qualify for similar exemption from fail-safe review by this Massachusetts state office.

Let us know here at www.hullwind.org what you think. We're not hard to reach.

By the way, Hull Wind 1 has been cranking away quietly and gently, and passed the 5,000,000 KWh mark before the end of February. We had a "Hulleleuia" party here, as you may have heard.

I remember it vividly, the morning I cried out at a solemn meeting of the National Park Service people in downtown Boston: "this man is a millionaire! [I was pointing at John MacLeod]". It was a roundabout way of saying "John's HULL WIND 1 machine has just this morning achieved its millionth KWh delivered to our municipal grid". I felt like a millionaire too.

Today I feel like John and I could give away a million, and have two-million left - because over this past weekend HW1 passed the 4-million mark! Hulleleuia !!

Here's a back-of-envelope way of sizing this up, and getting a handle on the approximate economics. Suppose (which is accurate) the value to us at the Light Department of each of those KWh's is what we'd otherwise have paid for it on the open market - 8 cents. Suppose further that such extra costs as normally come along (insurance, warranty/maintenance, allowance for money-overhead) are things we can recover via the pair of 'bonus' payments, i.e. the REPI's and the REC's. Then we have realised somewhere over $320,000 to put against our $735,000 total investment. It should be halfway to being entirely paid back before the end of its third year, at this rate.

And think of the value of the "bragging rights" on top of this. Civic pride, in other words. Our project has netted 7 awards, three of them national, and we've been able to host groups from all over our Commonwealth, many coming by boat, docking at the pier only 120 meters from the turbine itself. On June 10th it was a boatful of 170 Sixth Graders from Medford.

People have been talking a lot recently about one of our favorite concepts here at Hullwind: Capacity Factor. It's like a batting average. A hitter who says "I'm hitting 281" means that you can expect him to get a hit 281 times in every 1000 at-bats. This is the same as 28.1 percent of the total at-bats. A turbine that can say "my CF is 28.1 %" is basing its claim on its particular rated maximum power, in our case 660 KW. This means you can easily calculate an average-power number for us just multiplying 0.281 times our 660.

We've averaged a little over 185 KW, on a 24/7 basis (no 'holidays', not a minute left out of account, not even the hours of preventive maintenance!). The clock started at 14:45 EST on 27 Dec, 2001, so as of today we've been running 899 days. If we can get keep up a pace not less than 27.5 % (summer will be weak, but fall strong), we'll get to the final day of our first 3 years with 4,770,000 KWh's. Let's hope for a very strong fall and a not-so-weak summer!

On a less encouraging note, that MTC-RET promise of a new IRS benefit to Massachusetts ratepayers: still not in place. Despite their announcing the favorable IRS letter-ruling back in October of 2001, it now begins to look chancy whether, in April of 2005, they can help the Federal government get some of those tax-dollars returned to us in Massachusetts. You might want to ask them: how many more years are you planning to spend, converting this bright promise of 2001 into an actual cash benefit? Did you know when you announced it in 2001 that it might take you five years just to say 'yes' to the IRS? On the windpower side, this same RET has an unimpressive record. Its Executive Director said to a newspaper on the 10th of July 2000: "We see wind as being the priority". [ask them if the Wizard doesn't have this footnote right] It now looks that they won't have their first KWh until sometime in 2005. It's hard to build much of a batting average until you've got yourself into the batter's box. So far they're only as close as the on-deck circle.)

Here's an upbeat note to end on: On July 27th 120 or so Delegates from all over the country are scheduled to sail over to Hull. They'll be coming from the Democratic National Convention, as part of the "Wind & Waves" event organised by the good people at Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Conventions. Hull CARE is a member. They'll be sailing over on the elegant "Voyager III" catamaran, run by Boston Harbor Express. Congressman Bill Delahunt helped make the arrangements. Who knows, we may attract a very big name. We plan to give everyone

Just today we're completing month #27 of running our Vestas machine. There's a bit of news to report. First, the long retrospective look: we've asked a lot of our machine this past 825 days, both on performance and on transparency to you our e-readers. It's as if, all those months back we at Hull Light had asked of an employee we were about to hire: "We'll be expecting you to produce, good & faithful servant, on average 178 kilowatt-hours (each worth a dime to your bosses here) - per hour. You'll be expected to work (so long as the wind is there) 24/7, so every hour will be logged and counted. We want your average production to be worth at least $17.80 to us, per hour"

"No scheduled vacation days," we could have continued our warning, "like the Christmases of 2002 or 2003, or the New Years' of 2002, 2003, 2004. Even the hours we've planned in Preventive Maintenance won't be dropped out of our severe accounting. Also, you should understand that your performance, like a batting-average, will be reported out on a daily basis via the Web."

Now let's hear from this wondrous worker, looking back on his first 825 days: "I've delivered to you over $18 worth of your required output, and you can tell all your e-friends out there in cyberland about it."

Now for the bit of news: this past month, unlike every one of the 26 months preceding, the availability-rating of our dutiful servant fell below 96%. Not to say we harsh taskmasters forgave a single hour of this month's "down-time". No, it was 30 hours of true down-time

Here's what happened: early on Evacuation Day 2004 (a.k.a. March 17th) the machine shut down and sent a FAX to the Hull Light office logging the failure. John MacLeod went to inspect. A circuit-breaker in the ground-level equipment had popped open. John manually closed it. It immediately popped open again. John decided at once (a) to avoid doing anything further and (b) to phone our nearest Vestas maintenance crew. They were in full electronic contact with the (temporarily ailing) machine within minutes, and two of them promised to be out at the turbine before dusk. They were, and they worked that evening and the following morning to nail down their diagnosis.

Net result: before dusk the following day, our dutiful Vestas machine was up and running, delivering its customary 24/7 services and customary hourly average of $17-plus of very-marketable goods to us. You'd think it had been embarrassed at having to have that day of rest ! What had failed? Not the generator, just a circuit-board in the control circuitry. Vestas had been at the ready -- in case some more serious fault had occurred, to ship us a replacement generator, under a new warranty, given a 'worst-case' scenario. But no, the replacement circuit-board was all that was necessary.

So the net outcome for our dutiful servant was this: its record now shows an overall "up-time" average a bit above 99.6% Our severe rules of accounting (one might call them inverse-Andersen), and our transparency gets this message out to the whole e-connected world. No, our first 825 days have not been perfect in machine availability, but they've been less than a percentage point from it. We're taking a page take a page out of the recent book about our hardworking Brother, Paul O'Neill: "Yes, it hasn't been 100%; but 'Truth is best - always best. The principle is transparency.' (p. 206)"

Prospects for Hull Wind #2:

Fifteen days from now (15 Apr, 13:00), bids will be opened at the Hull Light offices, for the machine now under RFP. This was duly sent out, logged in the Commonwealth's registry of public bids. And this: each of three manufacturers (four if you count separately the two who have very recently merged) will be bidding. That will in turn enable our Board to host public meetings, on both April 22, 2004 (our regular monthly Light Board meeting will be entirely dedicated to this public presentation) and again on the morning of April 24th, a Saturday. These meetings will have the advantage of knowing what bids have been received.

Following those two public meetings, and following further notices both in ratepayers' regular monthly billings and in the local newspapers and on local cable TV, the Annual Town Meeting, set for May 3, 2004, will vote on an article concerning this. It is now prepared for the Warrant. Its gist is, Whether to put up an on-land Hull Wind #2, and whether to accept the Light Board's recommended siting. This requires a majority vote of all citizens present. By the following week, if we have a Yes vote, the Light Department will likely accept one of the bids. Lots of process, good clean process. Democracy at work, good clean democracy. Maybe it's even worth exporting. You can't say the same for some of what passes for democracy these days.

It won’t be long now. Hull Light’s RFP for “Hull Wind 2” is ready to be mailed out to vendors this coming week, bids due back by second week in April. We will be calling for bids to supply a machine in the 1.5 Megawatt class. Before our May 3d Town Meeting, ratepayers will have received mailings from the Light Dept., will have been invited again to give public input into the process of decision, as promised last fall. To be determined by a townwide vote in early May: whether to go forward now with a second turbine, and if so, which on-land site in town is the preferred one.

In recent weeks there have been ongoing discussions at the Light Department’s public meetings, about Hull’s playing host to North America’s first multi-megawatt offshore windturbine. Exploratory work has already begun on pre-development tasks, such as permitting, legal research and assessing the interest of manufacturers in some sort of collaborative arrangement. The general idea is for the town to benefit from sales of both energy and renewable energy certificates, the manufacturer to benefit from the installation of an R&D test-bed for this new scale of hardware, operating at the non-European frequency of 60Hz.

Welcome to our newest visitors to the website (the hit-counter now registers over 42,200 in the past 10 months since we began counting). Bridgewater State College (MA); CDM Corp. (water systems); Dairyland Power Cooperative (WI/MN); Florida Power & Light Co.; Good Harbor Fillets (Gloucester); IBM New York; Industrial Info (Energy); Industry Canada; Iowa State Computing Dept; Kennedy Schl of Government (Harvard); King Abdulaziz Sci & Tech (Saudi Arabia); Kodak USA; Navy Marine Corps Intranet; Newnan Light & Water (Georgia); Nordblom Company (real estate); Northampton College (UK); Pfizer; Prentice Hall Publishers; Ridgefield Public Schools (CT); Secondary Marketing Executive; Telekom of Austria; Town of Hopkinton (MA); Town of Weymouth; U of Georgia Institute of Ecology; U of Manchester Inst. of Sci. & Technol.; U of Manitoba (Library); U.S. Embassy, Sofia, Bulgaria; United Nations; University College Dublin (Ireland). Let nobody tell us Hullwind.org ‘s visitors are just another 42,000 ho-hum souls.

A net-metering story in Hull.

A few weeks ago I went past a certain Mr. C’s house in Hull, where Hull Light has put in a new Siemens meter of a subtle type. You can easily see it from his front sidewalk. Its LED screen cycles through a series of digital readouts, one of them called “POS”, one “NEG”. What does this mean? The “POS” is KWh’s Hull Muni Light has sold Mr. C. and the “NEG” is KWh’s he’s sold us. His home-grown energy comes from the PV installation on his south-facing roof. The concept “Net Metering” gets a new life right here, for all but the near-sighted to see.

Many of us have been checking into the rules of the ‘sell-back’ arrangements (up to 60 KW max.), which say to the enterprising citizen: Go ahead, your local retailer will sell you electric energy (positive from the power company’s point of view), but when you’re producing from your local source, you’ll automatically have sold them back – and at the same price! Your number of produced units is simply subtracted, one for one, from the total you’d otherwise owe us [Hull Light in this case]. You pay only for the net number.

Bravo to Mr. C. of Hull, who sells back on a level playing field. If I get his permission, I’ll give out his street address (he’s told a few friends he doesn’t mind citizens strolling by and playing meter-reader). Matter of fact it was his decision to make this meter easy to see from the public walkway in front of his house. Your citizen viewpoint (mine too!) might have you rooting for Mr. C. and his home team, accentuating the positive in that “NEG” reading, eliminating the negative in the “POS”.

Department of What-if

Suppose, a year from now, you’re preparing your Form 1040 for calendar year 2004, and you’re wondering if you can include an IRS-approved deduction (Charitable deduction, Sched. A). Very likely – according to something a fellow wizard whispered to us recently – it’ll have been approved since late April 2004, that the answer is YES. This is another way our trusty Federal Government (with an assist, by April 2004, from our Commonwealth’s MTC) – can level the playing field. Rather than keep up the robust level of subsidies to fossil fuel industries, while leaving renewables very lightly supported – this will be the IRS saying “you good citizens who’ve paid out your hard earned after-tax money to acquire Renewable Energy Certificates, can count on us at the IRS to chip in”. Is this not welcome (even if what-if) news? We may have to revoke our fellow wizard’s license to practice, if this turns out to be a baseless rumor.

Stay tuned for more news about which turbine manufacturers respond to our RFP. As soon as our townspeople have been notified, this Corner will put it on the web. Our motto here is ‘go public’.

Wizard's Corner #6. 31 January 2004

Tax time is coming again, my fellow citizens. In case you reside in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (nickname 'Taxachusetts'), you might want to follow up on this question of your Schedule A deductions. I mean whatever you paid out in 2003 for Green Tags, Renewable Energy Certificates - green power.

Remember, our Mass. Technology Collaborative was charged, over 2 years ago now, with setting up the local-IRS conditions to conform to IRS code, on our behalf. Want to test this out? Speak to your accountant, or to the MTC, or to the Gandhi's ghost (Lord Buckley admired his legally trained mind, and willingness to do time in jail. He called him "The Hip Gan"). Or H.D. Thoreau, hip to the Massachusetts drumbeat.

Back in the mid-19th century, when Thoreau was writing admiring words about our good sauntering places in Hull, Harry Tudor of Nahant was writing in his diary about his salt manufacture here, out at Windmill Point (yes, his favorite point already had that name because of the windmill that had preceded his own of 1830).

It seems like the Brits, then rulers of the sea and at least as imperial as Tony Blair is today, thought they could tax us ex-colonists on salt. We had to go to them for it, they figured, nevermind our declared independence. Harry and his brother Frederic (two Harvard youngsters, military age about the time of the Brits were burning down parts of Washington), preferred not to depend on Britain for salt, and not to submit to their tax-collecting habits either.

Let's make our own Yankee salt, they said. Hull native Dennis Means dug out the handwritten materials at the library of Harvard Business school. The "B School" may be as proud of our Hullonian brothers as we are!

Today, Hull Light is taking steps to get an article on the Town Meeting warrant, to ask about pumping saltwater from our plentiful Mass. Bay and converting it (with locally produced energy) to the pair of products, brine (Harry T. called it 'pickle'), plus fresh drinking water. A desal plant, it's now called. We've had lots of encouragement from our Town (despite a few dissenting voices - Hull's a democracy, as we're often reminded).

The U.S. Dept of Energy has said encouraging words. They've even wondered aloud if we might want to produce three products, not just two. That same home-grown electrical energy could, they've told us, subdivide some of our fresh water, into Oxygen and Hydrogen. The Oxygen can be directly used at our wastewater treatment plant (expensive 'peroxide', is used to combat odors, but can be replaced by directly-fed O(2)) - but the hydrogen would be the more interesting part.

Where are the hydrogen-powered vehicles?

Henry Ford, when people told him "but there are no gas stations, Henry - and no roads either" came back like Henry Tudor. Inveniemus viam, aut faciemus, 'the road to hydrogen cars: either we'll find it, or we'll build it".

Ask Andy Stern if this wasn't what he did 14 or so years ago now. He was an electrical engineering major at Worcester Poly, and people said to him, "Andy, you can't drive from Ft. Lauderdale to Lansing, MI (1650 miles) using only sunlight for fuel - you don't have a car that'll do this." Andy built his own car, raced it, drove all that way to Michigan with his team. In the process he won the personal admiration of -- guess who? -- the CEO of General Motors, Bob Stempel (himself a WPI grad).

Ask Andy about the particulars; it was patriotic work.

Here's a snippet from the handwritten diary of Henry Tudor, salt (and ice) manufacturer in Hull:

Wizard's Corner #5. 6 January 2004

These above are some of our more recent visitors to hullwind.org.

Keep on checking in, as there's lots that's new.

Howie Carr's AM talk-radio show dealt with windpower on or off the Massachusetts shores, and he said there were so many callers he'd have to schedule a follow-up show on this topic. Next time maybe we can get him to capture (for AM broadcast) our "audio" from the Ribboncutting event of 29 June 2002. The four sounds you can hear (Wizard has pointed this out), are (1) the gentle 'whoosh, whoosh' of the turbine's blades over Mr. O'Connor's head, (amplified by his PA system), (2) the applause of us in the crowd, (3) his own voice, overpowering our applause, and (4) the airplane that chanced to fly overhead - drowning out all the other sounds combined! Why not ask Howie if he'll put these sounds out on his radio waves, next time he covers this topic? He could put a challenge to his listeners -- especially to those who want to say that modern turbines are noisy. "See if your ears can pick up that low 'whoosh' sound, even after the PA system has amplified it".

Just like Howie to put out that challenge, right? What you'll hear mostly, dear Listener, is your compatriots from eastern Mass. applauding loudly, both for Hull Wind 1 and for Commissioner O'Connor's praises of it! There's still more to applaud here in Hull now that our sweet swingin' spinner has brought the town roughly $300,000 of gross revenues - not counting the $9,960.00 check Larry Chretien and his Mass Energy organization brought by at our 2d birthday party,

and not counting the roughy $10,000 he's due to bring us about 60 days from now, for the 'Renewable Energy Certificates' we've earned on top of that revenue. It's like bonus points, for harvesting this energy locally and with zero emissions. In round numbers, we can expect $10,000 each quarter, for the coming 4 years, just from these marketable 'bonus' points. So, suppose someone could actually HEAR that whooshing sound, he might say to himself "sounds like a gentle giant turning the crank on our local money-printing machine".

That'd be a good New England way of taking the sting out of it - if there were any sting there in the first place.

Dept. of What-if: what if the IRS had written an agency in Massachusetts a 'letter ruling', saying that, on certain not-so-difficult conditions, those who help out our Nation by purchasing these 'bonus points' in our State - can deduct the costs on their Schedule A, four months from now? You might want to ask the MTC in Westborough if they got such a letter, sometime prior to late-October of 2001. And if they did, what have they been doing since they announced this in late 2001 -- to satisfy the conditions, and get this Federal money to flow to our Commonwealth & its citizens? Why not ask them?

Another choice is to go the route of citizen Thoreau of Concord. If he'd had an IRS to deal with, you know what he'd have said to them.

Try out your skills in geometry on this one: what would you estimate to be the ROTOR DIAMETER of that 4-armed windmill pumping seawater into salt-drying vats in Yarmouth in the 1890's - assuming the square-yards of all the four blades comes to 26 sq. yds. Hull Wizard estimates that the four (roughly rectangular) canvas-covered blades are each twice as long, along the rotor's diameter, as they are wide. One or two more assumptions gets us the following approximate figure. An individual arm (i.e. the rotor's radius) is roughly 6 yds. long. This would mean a rotor-diameter of about 36 ft. of rotor diameter. Compared to our V-47, with 47 meters of rotor diameter, the diameter is about a quarter the size. Do you agree? The book by Kurlansky "Salt, a world history" preserved that 1890s Yarmouth picture, and we've put it together with a history of Cohasset.

Look at all the effort to get rid of (evaporate) the fresh water and get rid of it - to harvest the salt. They also burned wood to heat vats (near Salina and Syracuse NY) to chase away the fresh water. Today we want to hold onto the water and reject the salt. The open ocean, especially with diffusers distributing it carefully, has plenty of capacity for these small quantities of byproduct salt. Are there markets for selling the by-product salt? Some research is ongoing on this. Stay tuned.

Wizard's Corner #4, 22 December 2003

We were sure of our claim to be the "only commercial-scale windturbine on the U.S. coast between Maine and Florida". An alert reader of hullwind.org warned us about this: don't say you're the first coastal (urban or other) commercial turbine on any U.S. coastline - don't forget "Big Island" where they've had one for years. That's the coast of Hawaii. Thanks, O alert e-reader! A new nickname they've thought up over in Denmark for us in Hull: "The Suburban Turbine". Sounds like those particular Danes, whose consciousness spans the globe, haven't found another quite like us. So our suburbanite residents - are they unhappy with our Light Department? Quite the contrary. Have a look at what Bernadette White has to say. She's a 42-year resident. Her home is the closest of anyone's in our suburb to the foot of the turbine:

Bernadette White

Have you heard, we passed the 3-million KWh mark? That was early in the day on 12 December. We sent out an e-transmitted Drum-Roll far and wide, and expect that we'll have cleared the 3.1 million mark by the 27th - the time of our machine's 2nd birthday. Stop and think about this because your town could reap similar benefits by doing something similar.

Try this two-step thought experiment, with your town or city in the back of your mind:

(1) suppose each one of those KWh's was completely Unmarketable as an ordinary commodity. This is just a thought-experiment -- in truth each one has been quite marketable, and not one of them 'sat on the shelf' more than a few microseconds from the moment of generation till they were sold, at roughly a dime. Think of this as all zeroed out for the purposes of this thought-experiment (maybe we gave them all away to our friends in Quincy).

(2) now calculate the value, in our socially-responsible Commonwealth, of the Renewable Energy Certificates, what you might call the 'emissionlessness bonus points' - which are marketable in a fully separate market. Today these sell wholesale for around 3 cents per KWh. That's $90,000 for the whole set of 3 million. Now add in the federal incentive, today rated at about 1.8 cents per KWh, and you'll find it hard to settle for a mere 'break-even' result, as many of our friends thought we'd be forced to do. Too busy saving our rate-payers and citizens tidy sums of real money.

Now let's add a future-looking step. Suppose that Hull Wind 2 is 1500/660ths as powerful as Hull Wind 1, and by mid-2004 it is doing its part, generating at a steady 26% CF, quietly and emissionlessly. Then, even continuing (like fools) to give away the underlying commodity for free -- this time to friends in Hingham we'll say - the only things we're now thinking about being able to sell is the REC's. We can pay for all of our town's streetlighting, just from this 'bonus' revenue by itself. Any reason for believing this program of bonuses won't be cancelled in the near future? Mass Energy Consumers Alliance either has signed or is soon to sign long-term contracts with us in Hull to buy all of our REC output. We do have to keep producing the raw KWh's, whose by-product is these REC's.

So what town or city do you come from? Every one of these following have been asking detailed questions of us: Truro, Eastham, Orleans, Barnstable, Chatham, Bourne, New Bedford, Manomet, Plymouth, Marshfield, Scituate, Peddocks Island, Hingham, Quincy, Deer Island [recently some very detailed questions here], Winthrop, Revere, Peabody, Marblehead, Nahant and Ipswich. If you live in one of those towns, some of which have wind regimes at least as good as Hull's - why not run a calculation? If you live elsewhere (Newton, say, or Wayland or Wellesley), why not ask Mass Energy or another marketer of REC's to explain how coastal windpower can be a part of your future?

Here are some of government and NGO visitors to hullwind.org in recent months:

Government and NGO Visitors

Blue Hill Observatory	Agence p. Diffusion de l'Information Technol	Town of Ipswich
Bonneville Pwr Auth.	Marblehead Muni Light	Town of Marshfield DPW
Bost Harb Isl Alliance	Mass. DEC