For all its espousal of support for alternate energy sources, it seems the North Bay may be full of hot air.
Last April, California Governor Jerry Brown made it official—again. By signing legislation requiring that one-third of the state’s electricity be generated by renewable energy by the end of 2020, Brown put the stamp of approval on an ambitious goal established in 2009 by his predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. And with the stroke of a pen, California’s clean energy race began.
The promises? More jobs, increased investment in green technologies, cleaner air, a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and more energy independence.
The reality? It ain’t gonna be that easy.
While no one disputes that California is rich when it comes to natural resources, the ability to harness sun, wind and water energy—and make it economically feasible—will be a challenge. And, according to experts, it will require a change in mindset: Californians, by and large, like their landscapes unspoiled, and renewable energy projects are going to require acceptance of new yard ornaments.
Famous for its sunshine, Californians have long been generating solar energy, and the photovoltaic panels that decorate rooftops and fields have become somewhat of a status symbol. But solar energy is only part of the story. To reach the state’s renewable energy goal, projects utilizing other resources—particularly wind—will need to be expanded.
And that’s where things get dicey.
Ride like the wind
While California is recognized as the birthplace of America’s wind industry some 30-plus years ago and is known for its cutting-edge wind farms at Altamont Pass, San Gorgonio Pass and Tehachapi Pass, the truth is that less than 3 percent of renewable energy produced in the state comes from wind power. The reasons for the dearth of wind projects are basically two-fold: It turns out California really isn’t that windy, and folks just don’t like those darn turbines.
“NIMBY [not in my back yard] is the term,” says Cordel Stillman, deputy chief engineer for the Sonoma County Water Agency, which has been heavily involved in researching renewable energy for more than five years in an effort to be carbon-free by 2015. “People just don’t want to have those turbines nearby.”
Sascha von Meier, professor of energy management and design at Sonoma State University, agrees. “In California, energy production has been mostly out of sight, except in working communities where power plants are welcomed because the folks are glad to have a job. Affluent neighborhoods are usually away from power production, except for solar, which is now a status symbol. Some people think wind turbines are pretty and others think they’re ugly, but either way, they’re more in-your-face than solar panels. There’s a perception that property values go down the drain because they’re eyesores, sort of like transmission lines,” she says.
She points to one prominent project in the North Bay—a single large turbine at McEvoy Ranch in Petaluma—as a perfect example of what happens when “wealthy people suddenly object to something aesthetically when it’s in their backyard.”
Working with Morita Construction Company of Penngrove and Sage Renewables of Inverness, McEvoy Ranch installed the first privately owned turbine of its size in Marin County in 2009. The windmill is 98 feet tall at the hub and has 50-foot blades. Estimates are that the windmill will reduce the ranch’s greenhouse gas emissions by 110 tons annually. According to Williard, principal at Sage Renewables, the windmill will produce 50 to 60 percent of the ranch’s electrical needs.
To receive a county permit for the project, McEvoy Ranch spent more than six years conducting site analysis, environmental impact studies (EIRs) regarding noise, bird mortality and structure height, among other concerns. And it’s not done. According to Williard, a three-year, post-installation avian impact study is still being conducted.
“So far, in the more than year and a half of the post-installation study, we haven’t found any dead birds,” Williard says. “It’s not going to be an issue. And the McEvoy family certainly wouldn’t have done the project if it thought for a minute that there’d be a significant impact on the avian population.”
von Meier echoes Williard’s comments. “It behooves us to think about the particulars of the site. It’s not a good idea, obviously, to put a wind farm in the middle of a migratory bird flight path. But you have to consider that freeways and buildings kill a lot of birds, too—not to mention housecats!”
As for noise, Williard says the windmill was strategically placed in the middle of the ranch, and an acoustic engineering firm measured the ambient noise level. “We moved it far enough away so the neighbors wouldn’t hear it, and it’s even hard to hear if you’re working in one of the surrounding ranch buildings.”
Williard adds that Sage Renewables has done wind energy resource assessments at various sites in the North Bay, but has nothing on the drawing board right now. “Wind development is really difficult for any number of reasons,” he explains. “Permitting, certainly in Marin, is quite difficult under any terms, but the requirements are particularly stringent for wind projects. And then there’s the fact that you have to have a considerable amount of wind, because a small difference in speed makes a big difference in the power generated—and there’s really not that much wind in Marin.”
Omar Peña, assistant planner with the Marin County Sustainability Team, notes that the county recently passed an ordinance to make it easier for smaller wind energy projects, particularly on larger agricultural properties, to make it through the review process. “In the past, any and all wind energy projects required a use permit. Now the smaller projects only have to meet certain requirements” to be approved, he says.
Peña says the county has received a few inquiries, but no wind energy projects—except for a proposal for two ridgetop research towers by NextEra Energy Inc. outside of Dillion Beach, which was approved by the Marin County Board of Supervisors last year—have been undertaken to date. When NorthBay biz contacted officials in Sonoma and Napa counties, both reported that requirements for wind power permits had been eased somewhat, but no projects had been requested.
The answer is blowing in the wind
While the aesthetics of wind power are obviously of concern (to some), there’s also the simple fact of nature. California, except for a few areas, just isn’t as windy as some might think, especially in the North Bay.
“It’s true the North Bay doesn’t have much of a wind resource except for small pockets,” explains von Meier. “The Petaluma Gap has consistent winds and offshore winds are substantial. But [establishing turbines] offshore is a whole other story, and I don’t think we’re going there anytime soon.”
In the United States, the Midwest is where the action really is when it comes to wind power. In Iowa, nearly 16 percent of the state’s electricity comes from wind power, making it tops in the nation, followed by North Dakota (12 percent), Minnesota (9.7 percent), South Dakota (8.3 percent) and Kansas (7.2 percent).
“In the Midwest, farmers are excited about wind power because it lets them get more revenue off their land,” von Meier says. Windmills have dotted the Midwestern landscape for years, “and no one complains that they look bad,” she says. “Aesthetics and property value aren’t the same kind of issues in the Midwest.”
But here in the North Bay, the locals who’ve tried wind say it’s a lot of effort for a small reward.
Mark Pasternak has owned Devil’s Gulch Ranch near Nicasio since 1971. When he bought the 75-acre property, it was completely “off the grid,” operating solely on battery power. In 1972, he installed an Australian-made windmill that charged batteries and ran a 110-volt direct current system that met his base energy demands. All was well for about nine years. When he planted his vineyard, the irrigation pump wouldn’t work on such a low amount of electricity, so he hooked into PG&E but didn’t link the windmill because of “poor technology,” and the fact that the windmill broke about the same time.
In 2004, he bought a refurbished windmill over the Internet from a wind farm that was repowering. “I immediately started having problems with it, and you just can’t go into the Yellow Pages and find a windmill repair guy. They don’t exist,” he laughs. He was lucky to find help from San Diego-based enXco, a renewable energy consulting firm with an office in Tracy. With great effort they got the windmill going, but the old control board was analog and they upgraded it to a computer logic controller. Things got worse because he had bought a single-phase generator instead of a three-phase one, and the existing programming in the computer logic controller wouldn’t work correctly.
“I didn’t have three-phase power and, rather than spending the money to bring it in, I chose to swap the three-phase generator that came in the original windmill with a new, single-phase generator. Big mistake.
“The whole three-phase, single-phase issue really threw me for a loop,” Pasternak continues. “I limped along and got it working half-assed, but ultimately I had many problems. The yaw motor [which controls turning into the wind] burned out and even though it was made by an Italian company that still exists, the folks there don’t speak very good English. We ended up having the gear we needed made by a machinist here, but by then, barn owls had built a nest and we couldn’t turn on the windmill because it would scare them, so we had to wait four months for the chicks to grow. Once we got the nest cleaned out and put up fencing to keep birds out, a lightning strike took out the sensors for wind speed and wind direction. Every little glitch requires someone with great expertise to fix it because it’s so complicated.”
Pasternak says at least his permit process was fairly easy, because he slid in during a time when there was a state statute that was more lenient than what Marin County later adopted. He also didn’t have issues with neighbors. “At the time, there were no non-agricultural, retired or independently wealthy persons here, who wanted only to have a nice, quiet, little residential scene and pastoral views fro themselves,” he says. “It’s unfortunate that it’s so easy for one disgruntled or disagreeing neighbor with substantial financial resources to stall or kill a beneficial project by hamstringing the county using the legal process. I was very lucky and the county was happy I could do it.”
All in all, Pasternak says he has no hesitation to recommend windmills and wind energy, despite his personal experiences, so long as technical expertise is nearby. “There’s just not enough infrastructure and expertise to support it yet,” he says.
Nearly two years ago, Anaba Winery in Sonoma became the first Northern California winery to install a wind turbine to generate electricity. Owner John Sweazey has literally embraced the upward-drifting anabatic winds that traverse his vineyard in the breezy Carneros region, using them as a marketing tool. He named the winery Anaba (in reference to the property’s breezy nature), his website has a wind theme, and he thought it would be a good idea to solidify the marketing with a 45-foot Skystream turbine to both produce energy and attract customers. He even developed a second wine label called Turbine.
Sweazey’s goal was to generate enough electricity to save $1,000 per year on his PG&E bill, and when he finally builds his new winery in the coming years, he plans to have it powered 90 percent by solar and 10 percent by wind power.
His experience navigating the Sonoma County permit process was “never fun, but not necessarily a surprise,” he says. “Even though the county seems willing to help, it isn’t bending over backward to make it easy. It’s a relatively costly permit process, especially when considering the sustainable aspects of the installation.”
While Anaba’s turbine has received lots of positive press, especially in wine industry trade publications, the company that installed it—Jonas Energy of Lake County—said subsequent advertising in the vicinity didn’t yield much interest.
“I guess it takes a unique set of circumstances to justify a wind turbine installation like this,” Sweazey comments.
Turn on the wind machine
The renewed interest in wind power has spurred technological advances in wind turbines, and two North Bay companies stand to benefit from the focus.
Wind Harvest International is a small company, based in Point Reyes Station, that’s developed a wind turbine that operates on a vertical (versus horizontal) axis. Smaller in size than most traditional turbines (less than 50 feet tall), Wind Harvest turbines are only sold to wind farms, even though President George Wagner says the company has been pressured to put them on private land. “As much as we’d like to do some backyard projects, it would drive us bankrupt,” he says.
Wind Harvest’s turbines are used as fill-in on land under large turbines. “They’re the trees and we’re the bushes,” Wagner says. By adding the smaller turbines to otherwise wasted landscape, wind farms can increase their energy production by up to as much as 100 percent. And there are no major issues with permits, because they don’t impact the environment and the land upon which they’re installed has already been designated for wind power production.
Wagner says California has limited area suitable for wind energy production. “The rule of thumb is that no one would live where the wind is good enough for wind power production because it’s too windy. Wind power is increased by cubic factor, which means that every three and a half miles per hour of wind doubles the energy output. For example, if you put a wind turbine in Palm Springs [San Gorgonio Pass] in 15 miles per hour annual average wind speed, it will produce $100,000 in electricity. At 18.5 miles per hour, you’ll get $200,000 in electricity. The wind only blows in California for half the year. You can’t let windmills spin slowly; it’s like having a car on idle.”
Wagner says Germany, Holland, Denmark, Japan and China are light years ahead of the United States in developing and assuring funding for wind power. “There’s nice little talk about wind power in America, but nothing is really happening,” he says. “All our company’s work is being done in Scotland, where the government of the United Kingdom is really starting to support wind power with the newly enacted Feed in Tariff [FIT] laws, which is fair and profitable.” [Editor’s note: FITs are a form of subsidy for renewable energy producers that add a guaranteed payment amount to the price utilities pay for renewable energy.]
One of the biggest issues facing wind turbine manufacturers stateside is that banks and insurance companies are requiring international certification of the turbines, which takes significant time and lots of money.
“For our work to acquire certification, we need computer analysis of five years of actual field data. That costs $100,000. Just to obtain the basic qualification permit under the new FIT laws, we have to put up four turbines on an approved site and run them for four to six months where we can observe them and make sure they’re OK. After that, a government testing person will observe the operation of the turbines for another four to six months. If it all works and they collect data that satisfies them, they’ll give us the document for qualification for the FIT law,” Wagner explains. “Only then will we be able to sell the power at these profitable rates.”
Wagner believes wind power has become a political football and, as a result, no one is able to score a touchdown. “California was on the forefront when the industry started,” he says. “But we’re no longer number one. It’s very embarrassing now, when even Texas has surpassed us.”
In American Canyon, Imad Mahawili is working on the residential answer to wind energy, heading up the technical offices of WindTronics, which recently relocated to the North Bay from its founding headquarters in Michigan.
Last April, WindTronics launched its Honeywell Wind Turbine, which is now available through authorized dealers including Ace Hardware and True Value Hardware stores. The turbine resembles a bicycle wheel, weighs less than 185 pounds and measures only six feet in diameter. It’s designed to be mounted directly on a rooftop or pole, and the power it generates can be connected directly to a building, the grid or to batteries.
The WindTronics Honeywell turbine produces up to 1,500 kilowatt hours annually, depending on its height and location. It uses a system of magnets and stators surrounding its outer ring to capture power at its blade tips, where the speed is greatest. It can start turning in wind blowing at a half a mile per hour and generates electricity in two miles per hour wind. Optimum performance is at 12 miles per hour, and customers can purchase it for as little as $5,795 (plus installation costs).
“It’s really a breakthrough product because it reacts to wind flow at very low speeds and starts producing at two miles per hour, while most other turbines aren’t productive until the wind reaches five or seven miles per hour,” Mahawili says.
Mahawili says the company hasn’t sold any of the turbines in the North Bay yet, but he has installed units on the roof of the company’s building on Dodd Court in American Canyon and another at a location in Santa Clara for his engineering department to study. WindTronics currently has eight employees at its tech center and is looking to expand as demand grows. Its production plant is in Windsor, Ontario.
“Small turbines are pleasant and relatively easy on the eyes,” Mahawili says. Having them accepted in residential areas “is an education process. The onus is on us to expose people to the turbines and teach them about the positive impact that can be made in reducing their carbon footprint.”
While helping people save good, hard cash on their utility bills is low hanging fruit in marketing the small turbines, Mahawili says the most important thing, in his mind, is how it helps the environment. “I have a doctorate in chemical engineering, and I’m a firm believer that our consumption of coal, natural gas and nuclear energy has serious, adverse effects on our environment.”
Mahawili says California is “more enlightened” than other states when it comes to renewable energy, but WindTronics will be focusing on overseas markets more than domestic. “We’re targeting Africa, China and India, specifically, since there are so many areas there that have no electricity, or, if they do, it’s exceptionally expensive. There are 1.6 billion people on the planet living with no electricity and that number is expected to increase,” he explains. “Our turbines can generate electricity to power LED lights in these locations. We can generate enough power so people can connect to the Internet. And it will change their way of life,” he says.
Beyond wind
While wind power is poised for growth in California, several other energy options are being explored to help the state reach its renewable energy goal by 2020. One excellent example of that effort is the aggressive program underway at the Sonoma County Water Agency.
“We’re looking at anything and everything,” explains SCWA’s Stillman.
The Agency has installed 10 acres of photovoltaic solar panels in three locations that produce 2 megawatts of electricity. It’s also investigated wave energy. “There are three locations for wave energy off the coast of Sonoma County,” Stillman says. “We discovered, however, that it’s incredibly expensive to get permits because of all the environmental documentation that’s needed. A pilot study alone would require approval by 23 organizations. It’s something we as a county are finding difficult to pursue—it’s too new and too expensive—so we’ll need to let someone else [like PG&E or a multinational firm] break ground on wave energy.”
In the mid-1980s, SCWA built a hydroelectric plant at its Warm Springs Dam and sold power to PG&E for 20 years. That contract expired in fall 2009, and the agency now uses the power it generates for its own use through a power company it’s organized with 12 other water districts throughout the state.
The agency is currently renovating one of its buildings on Airport Drive in Santa Rosa and is installing a ground source heat pump to use the constant temperature of the ground to heat and cool the building, Stillman says. It’s also planning to erect a small-scale wind energy resource to produce 10 to 20 kilowatts of electricity either at its treatment plant or on its office building.
Working with SCWA, Sonoma Compost is taking biomass leftover from the composting process and is converting it to biogas at the Sonoma County Landfill, “where they have generators that were originally built for a landfill gas project that aren’t being used anymore,” Stillman says. That’s a one-megawatt project.
And then there’s the chicken poop. “We call it our ‘Farms to Fuel’ project,” Stillman explains. “There are 2 million chickens in Sonoma County, and each one produces a quarter pound of poop each day, for a total of 500,000 pounds of chicken poop daily. We’ve cornered the market on chicken manure and this fall, we hope to start building a plant at our Larkfield Airport treatment plant to process the waste and create biogas,” a portion of which will be converted into electricity by a 1.4 megawatt fuel cell, which will meet 25 to 33 percent of the agency’s total base needs. The remainder of the biogas will be sold elsewhere, and the byproduct of the conversion process will be used to make organic fertilizer.
The various projects underway at the Sonoma County Water Agency underscore the need to be creative when it comes to renewable energy options.
“We need a new way of thinking about energy,” von Meier says. “We’ve been spoiled with cheap, accessible fossil fuels. Renewables won’t simply ‘be available’ where and when you want—we have to expend a greater effort to create and use them. It needs to be a mix-and-match portfolio that fits together like a puzzle. It takes a lot more work than simply flipping a switch and expecting the power plant to crank up when you need it to.”
And for all of the talk about renewable energy, von Meier has sage advice.
“Whenever we’re talking about energy think of this: Before you build anything new, think about where you can reduce waste and increase your efficiency,” she says. “Take a look at your house. Start with an efficient refrigerator before you put solar panels on your roof. And remember, the cheapest way to reconcile supply and demand, by far, is to reduce the demand.”
