Valley investors eye breezy future

By Damian Gessel
The Daily Item

September 07, 2008 08:08 am

— SUNBURY -- Inside Penn Wind LLC's main conference room, where workers with open laptops get down to the serious business of wind energy, dozens of purple and white thumbtacks dot a map of Pennsylvania.
The purple tacks stand for sites Penn Wind is actively pursuing, white for ones it has tested and found lacking. In the broadest sense, they mark the future of the United States. In the next-best-thing foot race of a newly thriving industry, they're a telling symbol for how quickly wind energy has arrived.
Finding a suitable site for a wind farm is not as easy as holding a finger aloft to check for a steady breeze.
According to ActionPa.org statistics, there are 10 wind farms operational in the state, with four more, including one in Northumberland County, under construction.
While electric prices have spurred great interest in the search for alternative energy sources nationwide, industry and state regulators said there are no proposals for other wind farms in the Central Susquehanna Valley.
Still, by the end of this year, Pennsylvania will be producing nearly 500 megawatts of wind energy annually, enough in theory to power almost 10 percent of the state's homes, said Thurman Brendlinger, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Clean Air Council.
Justin Dunkelberger, CEO of Penn Wind, opened his office on Market Street in Sunbury in 2006. Since then, his company has researched and acquired, through a lease, 200 acres of turbine-ready land in East Cameron Township, Northumberland County.
He plans to have as many as nine turbines online there by 2009, and will soon thereafter begin recouping cash on Penn Wind's $36 million initial investment. At full capacity, the site will have enough juice to power a city the size of Shamokin, Dunkelberger says. Penn Wind will sell the energy it produces likely to PPL.
By comparison, the coal-fired power plant in Washingtonville produces enough energy for 1 million homes, according to the utility.
The government has given renewable energy producers like Penn Wind a nice meal ticket: By 2010, all Pennsylvania utilities will be required to get 8 percent of their energy from renewable sources. According to PPL spokesman George Lewis, that means plenty of business for Dunkelberger and other ground-floor wind energy start-ups.
"We're putting at least $100 million into renewable energy projects over the next five years," Lewis said of PPL's investment. Over the next two years, commonwealth utilities like PPL will be scrambling to grab as much renewable energy as they can.
Pa. No. 2 in East
The commonwealth, Brendlinger says, ranks second in the East in wind energy, behind only New York.
"Pennsylvania is doing quite well with the development of wind," he said. "Looking at the big picture, wind is essential, especially in Pennsylvania, where there are lots of electric users."
But while the commonwealth may look good in its wind power production in the East, Dunkelberger says Pennsylvania lags behind in comparison to its neighbors out West.
The problem?
Dunkelberger believes Pennsylvania suffers from NIMBY-ism.
"Not in my backyard," Dunkelberger said. "That's the philosophy."
Considering companies like Dunkelberger's rely almost entirely on leasing private land to install their wind turbines, public disapproval can pose a significant challenge.
Brendlinger said he thinks residents will eventually come around.
"There certainly is some NIMBY-ism out there, but once Pennsylvanians realize the importance of wind energy ... I think they'll be OK," he said.
Eventually, if wind energy promoters like Texas' T. Boone Pickens -- who invested $58 million of his own money into wind infrastructure -- have their way, everyone will soon be used to turbines lining the landscape.
Leader U.S. has a ways to go
Growth of wind energy in the U.S. outstrips the rest of the world, and, according to Dunkelberger, the U.S. has utilized less than 1 percent of its total wind capacity.
A part of that is because it's not easy to put a summer breeze to work in, say, your electric toothbrush. Companies can and do spend years studying a single area, measuring wind direction and power, factoring in logistics, infrastructure and environmental concerns. In fact, the initial goal of studying a particular site is to debunk its usefulness, according to Penn Wind Due Diligence expert Rob Irwin.
"It's easier to eliminate sites by which ones wouldn't be feasible," he said. "You try to break a project down, and only after you've tried every angle to shoot it down do you move forward."
Even if a site stands up, like Penn Wind's East Cameron property, it can take up to five years to go from the research to the results phase.
And in terms of what wind power may mean to land owners, the answer may be -- unless you're the one writing the lease, in which case you generally stand to make around $3,000 per turbine on your land per year -- not much.
No effect on property values
The Renewable Energy Policy Project in 2003 did a comprehensive study and found wind turbines have little effect on property value. In the commonwealth, it found wind energy projects in Fayette and Somerset counties did nothing to change property values.
Also, unless you're building a personal wind turbine, nearby wind energy won't have any major effect on local energy prices.
So, aside from turning a profit, what role do wind energy companies like Penn Wind LLC have to play in the grand scheme of things?
"Consumer demand for clean energy sources is rising, due in large part to concerns about climate change, other environmental issues," said Julie Clendenin, spokeswoman for the American Wind Energy Association, "and energy security issues."
Penn Wind isn't talking about its plans for future wind farms -- releasing information about a potential site, they say, could give competitors the jump. But once the East Cameron turbines are up, Dunkelberger said his company will work on one new wind farm every year.
n E-mail comments to dgessel@dailyitem.com.

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