High School wind turbine goes up next week

Nantucket — By early October, Nantucket High School’s wind turbine should be generating electricity both to stimulate young minds about renewable energy and augment the school’s power supply.

The turbine, coming from New England-based Alteris Renewables, stands 190 feet tall and is a 100-kilowatt wind power generator. It is sprouting from behind the baseball backstop adjacent to the road running behind the school through a collaboration of the high school student group, Students for Sustainability, National Grid and the Schmidt Family Foundation. Dave Fredericks, a vice president at National Grid said he expects the turbine to arrive on the island on Sunday.

“Over the last week we have finished all the foundation work and have run the electrical connections. We really are sitting back waiting for the delivery of the turbine itself,” said Fredericks. “The week of Sept. 26 it gets delivered, and it should be installed on Sept 27, 28 and 29. I would hope it would be making power in early October.”

Wind power at the high school gained traction from Fredericks’ informal discussions with Wendy Schmidt of the Schmidt Family Foundation. When Fredericks floated the idea of putting up a wind turbine on school property for educational purposes, Schmidt jumped at the chance to help out. Fredericks then offered his energy expertise as a citizen of the island.The high school originally proposed a location for the turbine immediately west of Newtown Cemetery off Sparks Avenue and between the baseball field and the football field. Because the Historic District Commission would not support placement so close to the cemetery, the location was changed. Fredericks had wanted the turbine closer to the cemetery to give it an adequate fall zone, the area around it in which the structure could topple without damaging any other structures or property. But the commission said the wind turbine would visually affect the historic nature of the cemetery, said Fredericks, so we moved it over about 200 feet closer to the school.

The cost of the project, just under $500,000, is being covered by several sources including $165,000 in grants from the state, $435,000 from the Schmidt Family Foundation and $25,000 in goods and services from island businesses. This total puts the project approximately $11,000 short; however, the Board of Selectmen, which agreed to help pay part of that shortfall, approved $2,500 in funding for the project at its meeting on Sept. 8.

Fredericks said he expects this wind turbine to cover 20 to 25 percent of the high school’s electric demand, which equals around $30,000 in annual savings.

“But its real value is that it allows the kids to get actively involved in what these choices mean,” said Fredericks.