Published on April 22, 2009

EAST HAVEN — East Mountain’s abandoned radar station, the site of one failed effort to establish a commercial wind power site, has attracted the interest of another developer.

Vermont Public Power Supply Authority (VPPSA) has announced that it is exploring the possibility of putting three wind towers on the mountain.

“We’re really in an exploratory mode,” Patty Richards, VPPSA’s manager of power supply, said Tuesday. “We’ve done a pre-feasibility analysis, and it looks like something we want to explore.”

She emphasized that VPPSA has made no final decision on the project, and has not applied to the state Public Service Board (PSB) for the necessary certificate of public good.

That’s where the first project stopped. The PSB declined to issue the certificate of public good sought by the EMDC, a Montpelier company, after the developer declined to undertake studies of the towers’ potential harm to bats and migratory birds.

If it decides to proceed, VPPSA says, it will conduct the necessary surveys.

In its July 2006 order, the board rejected other arguments against the project, among them that a wind farm in the middle of the Champion lands would not be consistent with a $40-million public investment in conservation.

Ms. Richards said the initial analysis indicated that the project could supply electricity more cheaply than VPPSA could buy it on a long-term, 20-year contract. VPPSA supplies power to municipal electric utilities, including Barton and Orleans. If the project proceeds, Ms. Richards said, its member utilities would be asked if they wanted to buy power from the project.

From the mountain, Ms. Richards said, VPPSA would be looking for 27,000 megawatt-hours of power a year, “about 7 percent of our municipal systems’ load needs.”

“It’s not trivial,” she added, “but it’s not like it would supply 50 percent of our needs.”

VPPSA is looking for diversity in its power sources, Ms. Richards said, “and we have no wind in our power mix.”

She said VPPSA has been in touch with Matthew Rubin, an alternative energy developer who headed EMDC.

“We’ve entered into an agreement with him that reserves the ability to purchase the land at a later date if we decide to move forward,” Ms. Richards said.

EMDC’s plan to put a “demonstration” project on East Mountain was controversial, the subject of several studies and lengthy PSB hearings in 2006.

That may prove useful to VPPSA, Ms. Richards agreed, even though its project calls for three turbines, not four.

“We will have to redo all the analysis,” she said, “but we do have a template to work with.”

Ms. Richards said VPPSA is prepared to meet opposition if it decides to proceed.

“We are obviously going to get some feedback that is not positive,” she said, “whether we’re putting up solar panels or wind towers.”