Next phase in wind power search

By L.E. Crowley
Town Correspondent
NORWELL—Members of the Norwell Energy committee will open bids Monday that will move the search for a location for a wind turbine to the next phase.
Committee Chairman Charles Markhum said bids are due at 5 p.m. Monday (June 22) for a consultant to aid the town in a feasibility study for a wind turbine on South Street.
Currently none have been submitted, but Markhum expects at least one or two of five firms who have expressed interest and asked questions to meet Monday’s deadline.
The consultant who is chosen will then file an application to Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, a public-private agency, for a $50,000 grant to install a monitoring station that will test if the location has enough constant wind to make constructing a wind turbine economically and environmentally feasible.
Markhum said the committee, whose name changed from the Wind Power Committee to the Norwell Energy Committee at town meeting earlier this month, is eyeing an area of South Street where the roadway dead-ends at the water department for a possible wind turbine after a town-wide assessment of possible locations over the last six months.
Other sites such as the high school are still potential locations, Markhum said, but another water department property on Grove Street, has been all but ruled out for the present time because the town may need the site for well water exploration and it is uncertain how a wind turbine at the same location would affect those future plans.
Markhum said the committee hopes to name a consultant and begin the application process for the money to install the wind monitoring station as soon as possible and that once constructed the wind study could take up to a year.
“We are not in any danger of moving too fast,” he said.