In Suffolk, homeowners try small-scale wind power

BY CAROLINE E. RUSE | caroline.ruse@newsday.com

August 6, 2007

Richard Jarzombek's monthly electric bill has been between $30 and $40 for the past 20 years. Soon, it could be zero.

Jarzombek, 59, has largely powered his Baiting Hollow home with wind power since installing a 100-foot wind turbine in the early 1980s.

It "seemed to be the right thing at the right time," he said of the era when the Shoreham nuclear power plant was due to open and residents worried about what would happen to the price of power.

"I'm a firm believer that, in the right situation, windmills are fine," he said. "I'd never put a mill in a residential area. You need the property to be able to do that."

Jarzombek has the property - between 5 and 6 acres - and enough wind so that, for the past 20 years, he has sold excess electricity back to the Long Island Power Authority for 6 to 7 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Even though he produced enough energy to sell some back, he had to pay LIPA, because the cost of buying energy is higher than the rate he received for the energy he sold.

Then, in December, LIPA installed a "net meter" that tracks the extra kilowatt-hours the windmill produces - for which LIPA gives him credit. So if, at the end of a year, the windmill has produced at least the same amount of energy his home has used, he'll owe only a meter charge of $3 per month.

Hoping meter reads zero

The windmill, he said, has averaged 10,000 kwh per year over the past 20 years, or nearly what his home uses in a year. The average Long Island home used between 9,000 and 10,000 kwh per year over the past five years, according to LIPA.

"Hopefully, when we get back to December, [the meter] will read zero, zero, zero," he said. "I will not owe for any electricity in the year."

Jarzombek is among just a handful of people on Long Island who own wind turbines that create clean, sustainable energy for their homes, according to Renewable Energy Long Island.

But executive director Gordian Raacke said the nonprofit organization receives three or four calls each month from residents requesting information about installing turbines.

Despite growing interest, Raacke said spread of the technology is slow - partly because of outdated or absent town codes regulating it and partly because generators don't work well for every site.

"It may not be windy enough, the lot might be too small, or it could be too close to the neighbors," he said. "The homeowner typically has no easy way of assessing wind resources."

Many sites on the North Fork, however, are capable of supporting generators, said James Minnick, and the average 14-16 mph wind speed is ideal. Minnick's company, Eastern Energy Systems Inc. of Mattituck, is one of the few companies on Long Island that sell and install wind and solar systems.

"There's people who want these things," said Minnick, 25. "I'd probably have 10 installed right now if it wasn't for the town's restrictions."

Codes lacking

Most Long Island towns have nothing on the books addressing wind energy, and those that do have codes that were written up to 20 years ago when the technology was different, Raacke said.

At least two towns, Southold and East Hampton, are working to change that.

The Southold Town Board adopted a new code July 17 aimed at the owners of farms and wineries. It establishes guidelines for installing generators for properties larger than seven acres.

Under the code, turbines can't be more than 120 feet high and cannot produce more than 25 kilowatts, or 30,000 to 40,000 kilowatt-hours, of energy. (A kilowatt-hour is the unit of energy most used when describing electrical energy, and is equal to the work done by one kilowatt acting for one hour.)

"We are going to look at residential, but we needed to start someplace," said Marie Domenici, chairwoman of the Southold Town Alternative and Renewable Energy Committee, a seven-member group formed in August 2006.

Southold Town Supervisor Scott Russell, however, said the town probably wouldn't revisit the issue any time soon. He said turbines up to 35 feet high are permitted on residential properties under the existing building code. A turbine of that size could potentially generate 4,000 to 6,000 kwh.
The idea of this wind code was that we recognize there's still work to be done with the technology, but we wanted to be proactive and get someting on the books to allow for it in the future," Russell said.

In East Hampton the town board is circulating a draft proposal to revise its code among members.

The town's current code requires any wind generator to gain approval of the town board. The new code would transfer supervision to the Architectural Review Board and set up different requirements for two types of generators - those that attach to a roof and those that mount to a ground tower.

Minnick said he didn't recommend rooftop generators for homes because the vibrations from the spinning blades can uproot nails. Some companies do have generators specially designed for rooftops of commercial buildings.

Under the East Hampton code only the tower-mounted generators would require a public hearing.

"It's been in front of the town board for some time now, so they're going to be discussing it in the very near future," said Tiffany Scarlato, East Hampton assistant town attorney, who drafted the proposal.

Planning to install turbines

Yet, some people, tired of waiting for the towns to develop and pass new codes, are planning to install turbines with or without municipal consent.

Don Jayanaha, 43, of Mattituck has been working with Minnick to install a 37-foot turbine beside his home within the next three months - even if that means putting a flag on the turbine's pole, because town code expressly exempts flagpoles from height restrictions. The turbine will cost approximately $12,000.

"I'm determined to do what is good for the environment," Jayanaha said. "All these people, they talk about these things and nothing gets done. I'm going to take my own initiative."

Jayanaha already paid $25,000 in May to install solar panels on his home, and he sells excess energy back to LIPA. His energy bill is negative $44 in the summertime, he said.

"I need a little bit more energy for the winter months," he said. "That [turbine] will completely take care of all my electricity needs."

Minnick, who installed a 45-foot turbine last year at his parents' home in Laurel, where he lives, said many people have the wrong idea about turbines.

"You can't see it from the road or half the places in the yard, and it doesn't make a lot of noise," he said of his turbine. "I don't think anybody knows it's here."

Arguments against residential wind turbines generally center on allegations that they are eyesores in the neighborhood, create noise and kill birds. Little research has been done on the effect small wind systems have on birds; a 2001 study by the National Wind Coordinating Collaborative found commercial wind generators, which are hundreds of feet tall, caused just more than two bird deaths per turbine per year.

As for the noise, the Southold Town Renewable Energy Committee reported that the decibel level of small turbines in heavy winds is usually no louder than 60 dB - or the equivalent of normal conversation.