Windmills may never crop up in the Hilltowns, but a group of residents is preparing for the possibility anyway.

Thanks to a grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, four Hilltowners are spearheading an effort to develop a model for putting wind energy turbines in the Helderbergs. The remarkable thing about the effort, the four say, is that it’s driven by a community, not a corporation.
"The idea is, if a project comes out of this, it will be a community wind project," said Daniel Capuano, a Hudson Valley Community College professor and former Knox resident.
"This is a new model for New York," said Kathleen Moore, of Berne, a wind-energy consultant.
Two years ago, Capuano; Moore; Knox county legislator Alexander "Sandy" Gordon; and another wind-energy consultant, Loren Pruskowski, of Delanson, started talking about wind energy in the Hilltowns.

Because of their elevation, the Hilltowns are the prime spot in the Capital Region for generating wind energy. As altitude increases, so does wind speed, and amount of energy generated increases exponentially with wind speed.
In February of 2004, the foursome held the first Hilltowns Community Wind Forum at the Knox Reformed Church. Pruskowski and Moore taught a room full of Hilltown residents "Wind Energy 101," Capuano said.
"What we found was there was a real interest. The key word here is community," Capuano said. "After that, people said, let’s do more of this."

Later that year, in November, a second forum was held. The concepts of wind energy were spread to a new group of Hilltowners.
"Roughly, there was the same number of people as the first one, but different people," Capuano said.

The most recent forum, this June, drew about 30 people.
"Only three of them had been to the previous ones," Capuano said. "So the circle is expanding."

Input needed

Recently, though, the focus of the project has shifted because of the NYSERDA grant. The authority has agreed to fund the group’s proposal to explore the possibility of wind energy in the Hilltowns.

Though it is only in its beginning stages, the group says, the project is not to create a plan, but to create an example.

It will identify sites in the Hilltowns that are good for turbines, pick the best one, and do an environmental assessment, creating an outline of the impact a wind farm would have on the area. The final product will be a business prospectus that would be available for use by a local organization, like a town government or community Limited Liability Company.

As an offshoot of the forums, the group of four hopes to get other Hilltown residents involved.
"We’re going to need a lot of input from the community on this," Pruskowski said.
So, the very next step the group will take is to form a formal focus group, "so it’s not just the four of us," Capuano said.

Although in 2004 Gordon talked about the possibility of powering the hamlets of Berne or Rensselaerville entirely through wind energy, the model the project members will develop will probably not involve something like that. Generating energy for a specific place alone would be much more costly, and involve buying the transmission lines.
"We’d need a lot of support for that one," Pruskowski said.

However, wind turbines in the Hilltowns could give residents a better sense of where their energy comes from.
"If you have wind turbines in you daily life, you can see them and say ‘Here’s electricity right in my backyard,’" Capuano said.

Although nothing is for sure, the group predicts its model will generate about 10 megawatts of electricity, about a quarter the amount of a typical commercial project. That would mean between five and eight turbines, they say.

Dollars and sense

Initial costs for wind turbines, Pruskowski said, is usually about a dollar per watt, or $1 million per megawatt. But, the group thinks the benefits of wind energy far outweigh the steep price.

Most importantly, the group says, wind energy is renewable. Caused by the heating and cooling of the atmosphere by the sun, wind will be around as long as the planet. Thus, as the cost of traditional finite fuel continues to increase, the cost of wind is stable.
"That is one of the stronger arguments," Moore said. "The cost of wind never goes up."

Also, the group says, wind energy could be good for the local economy. In addition to the revenue generated by the turbines, landowners could rent out space for them and continue to farm around the base.

There are, of course, drawbacks. For example, the visual impact of turbines and the danger they may pose to birds and bats.

Turbine technology is continually improving, and becoming safer and safer for wildlife, the group says.

The group is seeking community input on the visual impact.
"There is a visual component that comes up in these things," Capuano said.

Under the NYSERDA grant, the project will take three years.

The group sees its work as part of a larger movement in New York towards renewable energy. The state government has ruled that a quarter of the electricity sold in the state must come from renewable sources by 2013.
"That’s a very aggressive goal," Pruskowski said. To do that, he said, the state is "incentivizing" the value of renewable energy, drawing major corporations into the industry.
"That’s what allows this project to work," Pruskowski said. "That’s why we’re confident. There’s enough money to be made to make people interested."