The 1.5-megawatt wind turbine at Massachusetts’ Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort began generating electricity last August. But another natural force—gravity—nearly ruined the carefully laid plans of Jiminy’s CEO and president, Brian Fairbank, to tap the readily available power of the wind.

By late June, after years of research, preparation, and perseverance, the turbine had arrived at the resort. A two-mile long access road had been spooned into ski runs to accommodate transport of the 250 tons of components.

First up was the 300-ton crane. The 29-foot-wide base scraped up against the rock sidewalls of the road, but made it. The 320-foot boom was disassembled for transport in 25 separate trips.

Next up was the bottom part of the 253-foot tower. At 41 tons, it was also the heaviest component yet. The truck was hitched to a D-9 bulldozer for the trip up the mountain. But more brute power was needed. A D-6 bulldozer was added to the D-9 to pull, and then a companion team, a D-6 and D-9, were added at the rear, to push. That did the trick.

But the greatest challenge remained. The nacelle—a school bus-sized box that sits atop the tower and holds the gear box, machinery and electronics—weighed 60 tons. It was so heavy that the tires of the lowboy trailer looked flat. The steel bed carrying the $1.2 million piece also began to bow, tilting the expensive cargo sideways.

A second trailer was recruited, but with more tires at the side—16 altogether under the trailer—and the bulldozers were fired up once more. Carefully, tediously, the load was grunted and clawed up the mountain.


ASSESSING THE TURBINE
Despite the tribulations, Fairbank remains bullish about his $3.9 million wind turbine, the largest ever built by a private company for its own use. He believes it’s a sound business decision, one that will stabilize the electricity costs at Jiminy Peak far into the future. But beyond the not-so-simple math of energy costs, he says, it’s not only good for business, but for the planet, too.

Electricity is expensive in Massachusetts. Far from the vast stores of natural gas and coal that have made electricity relatively cheap in the nation’s interior, often only 4 to 6 cents per kilowatt hour, Jiminy now pays 14 cents. There, diesel fuel is burned to generate electricity. Jiminy estimates that electrical production by the turbine will be sufficient to annually eliminate the need for burning 383,000 gallons of diesel. That, over the estimated 25- to 30-year lifespan of the turbine, will be equivalent to eliminating 73 million miles of driving by an average car.

“My hope is that 10 to 15 years from now there will be 50 turbines at ski resorts across America,” he says. The basis for his hope is that there’s just too much synergy between wind energy, mountain locations, and ski area operations not to see more turbines.

Jiminy Peak studied wind energy only after plucking the lower hanging fruit of energy efficiency, beginning in the early 1990s. The resort employs what it believes to be the most efficient snowmaking technology, and has adopted many small energy-saving steps, like adding automatic timers on lights that go off 90 seconds after somebody has left a restroom. “You can buy the timers for $16 at Home Depot,” says Fairbank. Without conservation, Jiminy Peak’s annual electrical consumption would now be an estimated 9.4 megawatts. With energy efficiency and conservation, he believes demand has been reduced by 2.3 megawatts, or about 25 percent. The wind turbine reduces demand from the grid by close to another 25 percent.


MAKING IT HAPPEN
Study began in 2004. Jiminy was then paying 10 cents per kilowatt hour. In 2005, as oil prices rose 50 percent by mid-summer, with expectations of similar rises in electricity costs by winter, Jiminy intensified its study. The effects of Hurricane Katrina—constricting oil and gas supplies late that summer—left no room for doubt. By 2006, energy costs at Jiminy were $1.5 million annually, nearly double the 2004 bill.

Crucial to Jiminy’s decision to go forward were external financial incentives. The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, a state agency, provided a one-time grant of $582,000 for design and construction. Renewable energy credits (green tags) of $138,000 per year were available for 10 years through Philadelphia-based Community Energy Inc. A federal production tax credit of 2 cents per kilowatt yields another $46,000 annually. And finally, after completing new lifts, lodges, and snowmaking, Jiminy Peak was shorn of major debt.

Even so, Jiminy Peak’s banker didn’t jump for joy when Fairbank asked for $3.3 million. “We had to go through all kinds of pro formas to make sure the numbers work,” he says.

Jiminy’s banker, Jodi Rathbun-Briggs, of Legacy Banks, Pittsfield, Mass., says the renewable energy credits, or RECs, were an important part of the financing pie. “RECs are an integral part of determining the cash flow for turbines,” she notes. “In Jiminy’s case, RECs were a part of a bigger cash flow picture consisting of many parts. If the RECs were not there, it would have been a challenge to do the loan.”

Then, there was the matter of actually getting a turbine. Wind energy was booming. In November 2005, Jiminy put out a request for a one-megawatt turbine. Not one manufacturer responded; they would only consider orders of 10 or more.

It became a case of who you know—or, in this case, who the business partner of Fairbank knew: former GE CEO Jack Welch. Soon, Jiminy was in line at General Electric, which was interested in promoting its work at Jiminy. The resort is prominently located 2.5 hours from both Boston and New York City, and an hour from Albany.

Environmental issues have dogged many turbine proposals, but never seriously threatened the Jiminy project. One turbine alone does not make a fence for migrating birds. Sound at the base of the turbine is similar in volume to a conversation, and a short distance away, a whispered conversation. Aesthetics was only a minor issue. Though it’s visible from 12 miles away, it’s “just gorgeous, it’s just such a symbol,” says Fairbank.

Still, to lessen aesthetic-based objections, Jiminy chose to keep the turbine off the mountaintop, forgoing potentially 25 percent more in power production. The finished product is located about two-thirds up the mountain.

The tower itself is 253 feet tall, and from it spin three blades, each 123 feet long. From terra firma to the tip top of a vertical blade is 386 feet, just 5 feet lower than the ski area’s top elevation of 2,391 feet. The closest ski trails are about 900 feet away. Blades automatically cease operations when weather causes icing.


POWERFUL CONCLUSIONS
How to measure the turbine’s value?

The marketing windfall has been, well, enormous. The Boston Globe has carried two stories, The Wall Street Journal carried one, and magazines such as Wired also profiled the turbine. CNBC devoted more than three minutes to Fairbank and his turbine—almost an eternity on national TV. All this may factor into Jiminy Peak’s 19 percent increase, as of mid-January, in visits over its previous record year, and helped it top that record by late March. As Fairbanks sees it, the turbine bonds Jiminy with its customer, “because they care about the future of Earth, and if Jiminy Peak is trying to do something to help the future generations, they will support that business.” Twenty-eight percent of visitors this winter said the wind turbine contributed to their decision to visit Jiminy.

Turbine production also correlates well with Jiminy’s electrical demand. Studies predicted 50 to 60 percent of the turbine’s annual output would occur during winter months, during Jiminy’s peak consumption. Snowmaking is responsible for one-third of all of Jiminy’s consumption; over the course of the winter, the turbine produced 52 percent of the electricity needed for snowmaking.

Studies project that the turbine will provide for one-third of all electrical needs at the resort over any given year. The wind turbine is connected to only one of the several electrical circuits covering part of the resort. When conditions align, i.e. wind speed, resort load, etc., the turbine supplies all the power on the circuit.

When the turbine produces more than Jiminy needs, the rest is put into the electrical grid. With adoption of a concept called net metering, Jiminy is actually making money from sale of the electricity to its energy supplier.

Overall, Jiminy expects to use half the power generated by the turbine, and sell the other half back to the local power company. Experience from August to March suggests that’s a reasonable expectation; Jiminy sold 48 percent of the power back to the grid—1,245,384 kWh, to be precise.

Payback on the investment is projected at seven to eight years, assuming current prices. Fairbank does not. Although Jiminy’s rates are locked in at 15 cents per kilowatt hour for another three years, “I would be stunned if within five years I am not spending 20 cents a kilowatt hour,” he says. “In my opinion, I have served to protect us from long-term inflationary costs.”

Will the turbine produce as much electricity (and revenue) as studies projected? In January, a time of robust winds, the turbine was falling “just shy” of projected production, says Jim Van Dyke, Jiminy’s vice president of environmental sustainability. “But the output projections are based on a 25 year wind average,” he notes, “and in our first few months of operation we are just looking at a single point. I am confident that as time moves on, we will at times exceed the projections and at others be below them, but on average we will meet them.”

Given his 30 years at Jiminy, Van Dyke takes a long view of the resort’s needs. “The turbine project came about as a result of the economic study that Brian asked me to do. He said, ‘Our power costs are going out of the world. What can we do about it?’” says Van Dyke.

His answer: the wind turbine. “So far, knock on wood, it has been our best investment to date,” Van Dyke says.

Fairbank warns ski areas that adding a wind turbine will require an upgrade in personnel and training. The turbine requires a first responder for turbine problems, plus a backup. He also had six people trained in aspects of safety and rescue involving people working 253 feet high.

Jiminy’s experience also is an argument for smaller turbines. Although GE’s smallest turbine is 1.5 megawatts, another turbine manufacturer, the Danish firm Vestas, produces turbines half as large. They are not as tall, which allows smaller cranes, and hence easier access. With demand still strong, Portland, Ore.-based Vestas, which manufactures 32 percent of the world’s turbines, recently completed a factory to manufacture blades in Windsor, Colo., 55 miles north of Denver.

Not least, ski area operators must consider access to the turbine site. GE wanted a road with a 10 percent grade, an impossibility at Jiminy. Still, Fairbank advises a 20 percent cap on access roads.

Fairbank envisions no additional wind turbines at Jiminy Peak, at least for now. He will, however, continue to champion further energy efficiency and conservation in Jiminy Peak operations, as he believes more is still possible.

In his 38 years at the helm of Jiminy, says Fairbank, he has never tackled a project that has been more complex or challenging than the planning, permitting and installation of the turbine. Yet rarely has he felt so much passion. Even if climate change should prove to be unrelated to human activity, there’s no downside to his wind turbine, he says. It saves on energy costs. And in the process, he believes he has helped create a better future for his grandchildren.