Cape Vincent's community wind project

SED on Cape Vincent's community wind project
First published: December 07, 2010 at 12:48 pm

Below, in its entirity is a statement from Sustainable Energy Development, Ontario, on the community wind project:

Join SED and the RC&D to Discuss Community Wind

Sustainable Energy Developments, Inc. (SED), an Ontario, NY based company, works with municipalities, businesses, schools, farms and homeowners to develop high quality, community-scale wind projects. SED’s wind development services offer solutions to the diverse energy challenges facing these entities and provide a clear path to achieving project goals.

Together, SED and the Black River-St. Lawrence Resource Conservation and Development Council (RC&D) are investigating the potential for community wind development in the Cape Vincent area. The RC&D works with partners to provide local leadership and coordination for projects devoted to environmental conservation, community improvement, economic development and the wise use of natural resources.

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) defines community wind as projects smaller than 20 megawatts in which a local governing body passes a resolution supporting the project; members of the community are offered the opportunity to participate in an ownership interest in the project and are involved in the decision making process in its development; or the project’s local benefit is demonstrated in terms of retail power costs, benefits to the local grid, is incorporated into a micro-grid or helps to resolve remote power issues. Based on this definition, the future of community wind development in Cape Vincent lies in the hands of the people who live there.

In the fall of 2009, the RC&D secured a Rural Business Enterprise Grant (RBEG) from the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Rural Development Office for $99,000. The RBEG program provides grants to finance and facilitate development of small and emerging private business enterprises in rural areas of cities up to 50,000 in population with priority to applications for projects in open country, rural communities and towns of 25,000 and smaller. This grant is being used to assess the potential of a community wind project in the Cape Vincent area. SED has extensive experience in performing such analyses for wind projects since its inception in 2002. The work SED has performed to date has primarily focused on finding a suitable location for a wind measurement tower, so that wind data can be gathered and analyzed. A site prospecting map, along with a list of development guidelines, was presented at a public forum in June of 2010.

This grant program is designed to assess economic development opportunities and to form or support the formation of local enterprises that can realize these opportunities. The RC&D is helping the community create this group of local citizens. SED’s involvement is to provide professional wind energy expertise to assess the technical and economic aspects of a community scale wind project.

This is a community wind model that places local residents in the center of the decision making and encourages local ownership. This community group has yet to be formed, but now is the time to take the first step.