The Mayor’s Desk: Giant steps for a progressive city
The Mayor’s Desk Carolyn KirkGloucester Daily Times
Check out the entire story by clicking the link above. the part that made me do a double take is this quote from the Mayor-
Two turbines located at the Gloucester Engineering property owned by Equity Industrial Partners in Blackburn Industrial Park will generate energy credits, which will be used to cover Gloucester’s municipal electricity needs. In the process, the city conservatively anticipates saving $450,000 per year in energy costs. The city also will receive payments from the private operator of the turbines, starting at $40,000 per year with annual increases for the duration of the 25-year agreement. All told, city taxpayers will save a minimum of $11 million.
Holy cannoli batman. That ain’t chump change.
Let’s file this away for a year and considering the $450K is the “conservative” estimate and we could get more savings, revisit it when the numbers become available.
We will get to see those numbers right? Because at the conservative $450K per year, that’s a monster win for the tax base. Monster win, no?
I still feel bad for the folks that have to live near it but in light of those huge savings it has made me much more receptive to them.
I was not a fan of the idea before I knew that we could get this kind of return for virtually no investment on the local tax base.
So we’ll do like you know I like to do- Poll it Baby
Over/Under
In the first year, will the City of Gloucester receive over the “conservative” $450,000 per year in energy savings or under that amount?
or Under $450,000?
Good Morning Gloucester 
Wind turbines do NOT make noise..in fact they are rather beautiful..Holy Calendar Batman! Gloucester has entered the 20th century…yes i meant 20th century..we’ll make it to the 21 eventually
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They are beautiful but they do make noise. Falmouth has shut their Wind 1 down at night and are contemplating moving it to a place further away from residential homes. The one going up today in Gloucester is bigger than Wind 1, hopefully bigger is better when it comes to noise.
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Trying to get myself up to speed as to where these are going I made a map. Taking the locations from the Boreal Development study the two blue markers are the first two turbines. I drew 400 foot orange lines next to them to show their height.
http://goo.gl/maps/TOqDa
I think as you come up 128 to the Blackburn Circle these are going to look spectacular. Big Wind Turbines like this spin at a majestic rate. Looking at the placement, any worry of flicker, seeing the sun flashing behind the blades, is removed since the shadow will be cast to the north. There might be a spot or two on Eastern Ave where a setting sun will cast a shadow but I would be willing to bet the only hazard will be photographers stopping on Nugent’s Stretch to take a photo.
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Don’t get too excited about the city saving at least $11 million from this project. The standard way a business, or the city, should evaluate the savings is to consider the time value of money. $450,000 plus $40,000 received in the 25th year of the contract is worth a lot less than the $490,000 received in 2013. If you do a discounted cash flow (assume $500,000 per year) with a discount rate of 6% (conservative), then the value to the city is $6.4 million NOT $11 million. With a discount rate of 10%, a more standard rate, then the savings amount is only $4.5 million in today’s money.
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“with annual increases for the duration of the 25-year agreement”
do you not assume that the price of energy won’t also go up making the savings more as it goes on as well?
and it says that the annual payments increase during the duration of teh contract as well.
believe me I don’t know too many people who are as skeptical of green energy claims as I am but the city isn’t even paying for this, the private companies are.
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