Trip Wileman stands in front of the ridge line on Lowell Mountain where his wind farm would be located. Photo by Chris Braithwaite
LOWELL — Trip Wileman’s hopes of planting a home grown wind farm on the 2.5 miles of Lowell Mountain ridge line he has assembled have captured the attention of some Vermont electric utilities. Whether he will ever assemble the massive amount of capital needed to erect the towers is, he says frankly, quite a different question.
But David Hallquist, chief executive officer of the Vermont Electric Cooperative (VEC), says “we’ve been in discussion with Trip.”
The idea of getting involved in a wind project on Lowell Mountain may well come up during the current round of district meetings for the co-op’s members and customers, Mr. Hallquist said. Those started Monday in Williston, and will come to Newport on Wednesday, December 10, at 7 p.m. in the City Council room.
Citing the result of a “public engagement process” undertaken by Vermont utilities, Mr. Hallquist said 83 percent of Vermonters supported wind power, even if it was within their “view shed.”
“That’s a pretty positive endorsement,” Mr. Hallquist said.
“If we have a site for a community wind project, maybe that’s the kind of project Vermont wants.”
“If the project is supported by local utilities,” Mr. Hallquist added, “clearly the power would be used locally. We’re interested in every power source available.”
In a mid-November interview at his home on the western slope of Lowell Mountain, Mr. Wileman talked hopefully of how a wind farm on his 1,800 acres might fit with the needs of the Vermont utilities and their customers. Mr. Hallquist, he recalled, told him that, come 2012, “we have fallen off a cliff” in terms of Vermont’s energy supply.
After turning away from a big, Spanish-owned wind developer that wanted to renew an easement on his property, Mr. Wileman hopes to come up with a proposal that would be more acceptable to wind tower opponents.
“It goes back to who controls the resource, to where the benefits are going,” Mr. Wileman said.
But one of his neighbors on the east side of the mountain remains an outspoken critic of the idea.
“Do you remember when the big blue silos came around here?” asked Don Nelson of Albany. He was referring to the expensive steel Harvestore silos, which were aggressively marketed and endorsed by all manner of agricultural experts.
“They were going to be the answer to every farmer’s dream,” Mr. Nelson said in an interview Monday. A lot of them were put up, he said.
“How many are being used today? Just a very few. Theoretically they were a good thing, but theory and real life are completely different.
“To put those things on top of ridge lines is the craziest thing,” he said of industrial wind towers.
“It’s a pipe dream,” Mr. Nelson said of big wind projects. “Nothing’s free. It’s a very, very, expensive proposition to put them up.”
That’s just the sort of argument Mr. Wileman hopes to overcome as he struggles to learn all he can, as fast as he can, about the physics and finances of wind power.
He floods a visitor with numbers about a wind turbine’s efficiency and reliability (better than most people think, he insists).
But he’s quick to confess that he’s a long way from pinning down the dimensions of his project, or its cost.
He has cleared one of the many hurdles that he faces. The Federal Aviation Administration has said that 17 towers, each standing 410 feet tall, wouldn’t violate its rules.
Mr. Wileman is waiting to hear from ISO New England about whether the New England power grid could handle the power his project would generate.
One of the site’s attractive features, he notes, is that it sits two and a half miles from a major transmission line that could carry wind power into the grid.
But how much power isn’t yet clear. “I don’t know its capacity,” Mr. Wileman said of the power line.
Until he can answer such questions, he added, “I can’t sit down and have in-depth discussions” with potential customers.
“All this is very preliminary,” he said of his project.
For expertise, Mr. Wileman has turned to John Zimmerman of Vermont Energy Research Associates in Waterbury Center, who was involved with the Lowell Mountain project when it began.
Martha Staskus, a project coordinator with the company, said the questions remaining include whether a road can be built to the top of the mountain, and what the project’s environmental effects might be.
As yet, Ms. Staskus said, “we haven’t found any rare, threatened or endangered species.”
There is a smaller precedent for what Mr. Wileman is trying to do, Ms. Staskus noted. She’s spending most of her time on a family-sponsored effort to put five wind towers on Georgia Mountain on the Georgia-Milton town line.
Jim Harrison and his family hope to apply to the state Public Service Board for the necessary certificate of public good early next year, Ms. Staskus said. In comparison, she added, “Trip is one step back.”
State legislation that took effect in July pushes Vermont utilities to find renewable sources for power they add to their system, Ms. Staskus said.
And in turn, she said, her company is hearing from people who own land at higher elevations.
Are “home grown” wind projects likely to be more acceptable to the general public?
“Sure,” Ms. Staskus said. “That’s the exciting part about this.”
Mr. Wileman’s connection to the mountain is through his grandparents, who owned the Green Mountain Company, a timber operation, and built the large house from which the Wileman family enjoys splendid views of the northern Green Mountains. He bought their 1,400 acres and has since assembled 400 more, including high parcels that, for the 17 towers he has in mind, range in altitude from 2,283 to 2,644 feet in elevation.
The first corporate developer he chose to work with was enXco (East Coast), which teamed up with the Vermont Public Power Supply Authority (VPPSA), which collectively represents municipal electric utilities in Vermont.
But early public meetings about the Lowell Mountain project, which then involved other landowners and about three and a half miles of the ridge line, generated considerable opposition.
“VPPSA got cold feet at the unexpected uproar,” Mr. Wileman recalled, and withdrew from the project.
The oddly named developer, enXco, which in 2003 had set up two test towers to measure wind across the mountain, decided to sell its East Coast operations.
The buyer, Atlantic Wind, was a subsidiary of an Oregon company, PPM Energy, which last May was bought up by a giant Spanish energy company, Iberdrola Renovables, S.A.
Mr. Wileman said he tried to work with the new company.
“My big concern,” he said, “was if we get this done, we can’t do it like Texas, New York or New Hampshire. Vermont is different. I’d like to see more local involvement. I don’t want it done out of Oregon.”
He wanted it done, Mr. Wileman said, “so I can look people in the eye and say ‘This is good for you.’”
“They weren’t able to agree,” Mr. Wileman said of Iberdrola. So he didn’t renew the option that would let them continue testing the wind. He did obtain the wind data enXco had collected over five years, and he says it looks very favorable.
The corporate people he was dealing with, Mr. Wileman recalled, said, “Trip, you can’t do this yourself.”
“But I’m not one to be discouraged,” Mr. Wileman said. “I said ‘Okay, I’m going to try it. If I can’t do it, I’ve got your number.’
Important Stories 
