First Windmill on St. John Rises on Bordeaux Mountain

bevm · Post by **bevm** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 4:02 pm

If it helps lower resident's WAPA bills then I say why not? Lower utilities = lower rental rates for villas (hopefully)....
Unsightly? We have those fake pine trees that are cell phone towers? They look like crap and are an eyesore.

tjwgrr · Post by **tjwgrr** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 4:15 pm

StJohnRuth wrote:We have our first windmill!

My deepest condolences.

Greenskeeper · Post by **Greenskeeper** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 4:33 pm

Good luck with the price reduction. The wind farm being built in Nantucket Sound is going to cost 2X per kilowatt hour than current prices. A rate increase of 3.5% per year is also being allowed for 15 years.

It ain't easy being green.

Midas · Post by **Midas** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 5:52 pm

I am all for green energy, but a windmill? Why not solar power? No noise, no eyesore - seems like a better alternatve to me.

California Girl · Post by **California Girl** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 7:29 pm

BRY1105 wrote:Are you kidding me? So you wouldn't mind if one day you showed up on STJ for vacation and saw this:

This isn't too far from where I live and every time I have the opportunity to drive out to the desert, I look forward to seeing all the windmills! I don't know about the noise factor, but visually I think they're fine, even a whole bunch of 'em. Like Bev said, those crappy pine tree cell phone towers are way uglier!

A place like St. John is the perfect venue for wind power! And island needs to be as self-sustaining as possible in my opinion.

irbgolfin · Post by **irbgolfin** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 7:48 pm

I'd be interested in knowing what production they get after a year or so. Placing small wind turbines at such a low altitude and achieving good results is much more difficult than it might seem. You need to get higher off the ground to have consistent wind direction and speed. In the one villa I stayed in near Coral Bay the wind varied on either side of the house significantly, and the higher localized wind direction on one side was different than the prevailing wind due to the eddies in and around the ridge.

I followed a similar discussion in a location in the Rockies, and the smaller home sized generators didn't perform anywhere near as well as the marketing folks predicted. Could have been the specific installation, but the overall message was that the industrial sized ones that get higher off the ground and have significant site research performed better, but "downsizing" is tough to do and get good performance.

I'm all for renewable energy, but it's not as easy as it sounds.

irbgolfin

Berlingirl · Post by **Berlingirl** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 8:03 pm

I have seen acres and acres of windmills in CA also, but one thing missing was close neighbors. I remember thinking when I saw them this past summer east of San Francisco there was no developments anywhere near them due to the noise generated by them. Not that I heard any because we were in our vechicle, but because I live inMaine and for the past few years we've had those issues in the news on a fairly regular basis due to citizens complaints. They can be noisy and I for one would not want to have them next to me if I were renting a property on vacation. It appears this might be a very small windmill so hopefully it will cut down on the owners electric bills and not distrupt it's neighbors.

On another note, I will also say...I bought a house next to an interstate after listening to many people say...Oh you will get used to road noise, well...I never did and had to move after not being able to get a nights sleep in years.

Chet · Post by **Chet** » Wed Jan 05, 2011 10:19 am

Light reading...

http://www.energyboom.com/emerging/smal ... able-power

ClevelandDave · Post by **ClevelandDave** » Wed Jan 05, 2011 11:15 am

Eyesore!
Different strokes...

Muhaha · Post by **Muhaha** » Wed Jan 05, 2011 12:06 pm

There has been some discussion here in Chicago about placing a windmill farm a few miles offshore in Lake Michigan in order to remove the eyesore and noise objections. I'm curious if this has been debated in the V.I.

I suspect that the challenges of salt vs fresh water corrosion, and tropical storm sea conditions might be too much of an issue, but am curious.

augie · Post by **augie** » Wed Jan 05, 2011 12:23 pm

If I show up at Skinny's on Halloween dressed up as Don Quixote how many people do you think will get it?

California Girl · Post by **California Girl** » Wed Jan 05, 2011 6:01 pm

augie wrote:If I show up at Skinny's on Halloween dressed up as Don Quixote how many people do you think will get it?

Hahahahahahahaha!!!!

hawksnestbay · Post by **hawksnestbay** » Wed Jan 05, 2011 6:46 pm

Pete (Mr. Marcia) wrote:Wait a minute, I thought that there have been windmills on STJ for hundreds of years. I checked the forum archives and I didn't see anyone complaining about that huge one that was built at Annaberg.

I think some of the people that objected to the windmill at Annaberg escaped and took a boat to Tortola.

California Girl · Post by **California Girl** » Wed Jan 05, 2011 9:12 pm

hawksnestbay wrote:I think some of the people that objected to the windmill at Annaberg escaped and took a boat to Tortola.

I wish there were "Like" buttons on the forum.

Pete (Mr. Marcia) · Post by **Pete (Mr. Marcia)** » Thu Jan 06, 2011 12:44 am

Don't get me wrong, I'm neither in favor nor against the windmill concept. I really could care less. But, I do think it interesting how old this new idea really is.

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