Rooftop+Wind+Turbines

2/12/14 This project is dedicated to finding out more information about the tall wind turbine that exists behind the Fletcher Allen hospital. For years there have been rumors that the turbine is not actually hooked up to anything, so I would really like to get to the bottom of this and see if we get that energy to contribute to the Aiken center, bringing us ever closer to net zero. I have reached out to Gioia Thompson the sustainability director at UVM to find out if she has any info on it or to put me in touch with someone who might, I look forward to hearing what she has to stay and to get the ball rolling on this project.

2/24/14 I recently dug up some more information on the turbine. Apparently it was installed for demonstration purposes and the data was supposed to be being streamed on the internet for students to use as an educational tool, however I am having a hard time finding the link to it. I am waiting to hear back from Gioia so see if that link actually exists. So far she has only sent me statistics about the wind turbine before it was installed. It was predicted that the turbine produces anywhere from 3,000-5,000 kilowatt-hours which is enough to power a new, energy efficient home for 12 months. Rather than power a home, the $50,000 wind turbine was supposed to be used to power the surrounding street lights on campus, causing a reduction of CO2 output by 3,500 pounds per year. The 108ft tower was planned to feed electricity back into the grid through the Burlington Electric Department and UVM was to receive a credit for this energy production. Now that I have these initial predictions I look forward to seeing if that amount of energy is actually being produced.

3/18/14 I recieved some further information about the project that installed the windmill in the first place. A report was written about the "results" of the project by VERA, the Vermont Environmental Research Associoation. It was not very detailed and did not tell me exactly how much energy was being produced by each windmill. The report is attached the below. When I asked for current information from Mieko Ozeki at the office of sustainability I was sent a faulty link so hopefully I will get access to that soon. The first years worth of data was published on the website for the project but it was been taken down since then. This surprises me because UVM claimed that this would be used for demonstration purposes yet this data is not available anywhere. Additionally, in both the report that UVM put out and that VERA put out it claimed a kiosk had been installed to display the energy production yet nobody I have contacted about the turbine has directed me towards it so I am questioning its existance. This will be something else I would like to look into.

http://www.vtenergyatlas-info.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/VERA-wind-demo-final-rpt.pdf