For commuters, a primer on harnessing wind
148-foot turbine rises by expressway
Boston may see its first big surge of wind power tonight, as the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 103 prepared to complete work today on a 100-kilowatt windmill at its Freeport Street headquarters in Dorchester.
Towering 148 feet beside the Southeast Expressway, the windmill will soon become a familiar landmark to thousands of daily commuters, almost directly across the highway from the 165-foot
''We see it as the future marketplace," said Phil Mason, director of the union's training center, where about 800 electrical apprentices and 200 telecommunications apprentices take classes at any given time. ''We'd like to be involved in its development."
Construction began yesterday morning. By midafternoon, a clutch of union workers stood agape as a pair of cranes hoisted a 54-foot, 9-ton section of the windmill and gently placed it atop the 50-foot section they had erected that morning.
The union, which installed solar panels on its training facility in November 2002, began its foray into wind power about a year later, after representatives from the union's international headquarters encouraged local unions to learn about wind power.
''We have to make sure our members are proficient in as many technologies as possible," said Jim Spellane, a spokesman for the IBEW in Washington, D.C. ''And given the concerns about fossil fuels, we want to be at the forefront of things like solar power and wind power."
Union leaders sought to reassure neighbors that the windmill wouldn't bother them; it will have no strobe lights and make so little noise that residents of the nearest houses won't hear it, said Martin E. Aikens, business agent for Local 103. The Zoning Board of Appeal approved the plan last December, and the union met the board's list of conditions a few months ago.
The Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust is paying half of the project's $540,000 cost. The trust collects about $25 million a year from electricity ratepayers in cities and towns whose energy is not supplied by their municipality. The windmill is one of more than 350 renewable projects the trust has funded since 1998.
As cars whizzed past the construction site yesterday, James L. Christo, project manager for the trust, said the project's high visibility would be ''a home run for renewable energy in Massachusetts."
''We've got tens of thousands of cars a day, and this will be a daily reminder . . . that renewable energy is available to them," he said.
The union wanted an American-made windmill, but it couldn't find any companies in the country that could manufacture a relatively small one anchored to a single pole. Henry duPont, owner of Lorax Energy Systems of Block Island, R.I., ordered the wind turbine from Germany. Then he persuaded a North Adams company that specializes in making steel rolls for the paper industry to build the turbine tower. Morrison Berkshire used a $30,000 grant from the renewable energy trust to buy equipment and learn about how to make the steel tower that holds the generator aloft.
''We see this as the beginning of a growing industry, and from that we should have additional opportunities to manufacture towers," said Jim White, owner of Morrison Berkshire.
In a reminder that wind power has generated at least as much controversy as it has energy in the state, an opponent of a controversial proposal to build a wind farm in Nantucket Sound showed up at the job site yesterday.
Ernie Corrigan, a spokesman for the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, said he wasn't there to denigrate Local 103's efforts. Rather, he said, he wanted to draw a contrast between the scale of the union's windmill and the Cape Wind project. The proposed windmills for the Cape project would be 417 feet tall.
''When people see this they should bear in mind that what they're looking at is one-third the size of what's being proposed for Nantucket Sound," Corrigan said.
