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THE BAY CITY TIMES Construction starts on Thumb's second wind farm
Sunday,
July 13, 2008 By
JEFF KART jkart@bc-times.com
| 894-9639 UBLY -
Follow the muddy footprints. They were
made by more than 80 construction workers who have come to the Ubly area
to build the Noble Thumb I Windpark, a project of Connecticut-based Noble
Environmental Power. The prints
lead to 46 holes that have been dug in farm fields in Bingham and Sheridan
townships, where the wind usually blows about 15 mph. Each hole
will be the site of a 1.5-megawatt General Electric wind turbine, towering
more than 300 feet over the skies of The
development, being constructed by RMT WindConnect of Wisconsin with local
and out-of-state contractors, should begin spinning later this year,
officials say. It's
southeast of the Harvest Wind Farm, a 32-turbine park constructed last
year near Elkton by John Deere Wind Energy. Harvest
became the state's first commercial wind farm. Noble is set to be the
second, with similar-sized windmills. Noble
plans to begin receiving huge blades, tower sections, gear boxes and hubs
for the park in about two weeks. ''I've
been waiting for this summer for a long time,'' said Charlie Briolat, 50,
who has two farms that will accommodate five windmills and the park's
substation. Noble
officials set up shop in Bad Axe in late 2004, working out of a realty
office and signing easement with 82 landowners to put turbine pads in
their fields. The
company rented a construction trailer on The
project faced delays due to some citizen opposition, which seems to have
died down, and troubles with transmission agreements for electricity
generated by the towers. Briolat
said he supports renewable energy and the project also will help his farm.
He'll receive a portion of profits from the wind power, which will be sold to Consumers Energy, said Julie Harker-Leigh,
Noble development associate. Briolat
hopes to see about $2,000 a year from each windmill, which will help
offset increased input costs from fuel and fertilizers for his farm
business. ''I've had
people say, what have you got growing back there?'' the farmer said. So far,
workers have built an octagon-shaped pedestal for one turbine, constructed
of rebar and cement. Atop the
pedestal is a round concrete base, made up of steel rings and long anchor
bolts, which will hold the towers in place. When finished, only the top 6
inches of the base will be exposed. More than
450 yards of concrete is needed for each base alone, which requires dozens
of truckloads of cement, said Jeanette Hagen, Noble development manager
and a Parisville native. The only
Noble windmill erected so far is a model that sits on a file cabinet in
the office of Harker-Leigh, a Bad Axe native. She's
helping coordinate a monster operation to bring the turbine parts to town
from places throughout the country. The towers
are 263 feet long, broken into three sections. The blades, three for each
tower, are 125 feet long. Each turbine set also requires a nacelle, or
gear box, and hub, which holds the blades together. The blades
will come from Seven
complete turbine sets arrived in June 2006 and are stored in The big
parts could start arriving the week of July 21. But that date can change.
Some trucks can't move their loads at night or on weekends, because
they're oversized, she said. ''Turning
corners'' have been created at intersections, to allow turbine-carrying
trucks to make wide turns. Briolat
said wind could be his best crop ever. ''The
potential here is, there's not another crop I'm going to grow, per acre,
that has a better yield than this,'' he said. The
development is called Thumb I because Thumb II is planned, with 60 more
turbines in five When
finished Noble Thumb I will be able to generate up to 69 megawatts of
power, or enough to power 23,000 average homes, according to the company.
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