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Government alleges Chelsea wind project blowing hot air
By adamg on Thu, 07/25/2013 - 10:07am
The federal government says a wind turbine at a dormant mixed-use development in Chelsea isn't generating as much electricity as its owners claimed and is demanding the return of more than half the money the project got from a federal stimulus program.
In a lawsuit filed yesterday in US District Court in Boston, the US Attorney's office demands the return of $372,000 in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds given the owners of the Forbes Park project - plus $140,000 in penalties and fees.
In the lawsuit, the government says Forbes Park won a $621,000 stimulus grant for five years of wind-energy production from a 600-kW turbine, but that a 2012 audit by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory showed the turbine was not generating the minimum amount of energy required as a condition of the grant.
The government says Forbes Park has refused to respond to repeated requests for the money from both the Treasury Department and private debt collectors the government hired.
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Comments
Good luck getting that money back...
Wasn't this built by the same developers who failed to build a new development at the same location? So now we're all screwed out of tax money, wind energy, and any chance of development over on that part of Chelsea Creek.
Coincidentally, yesterday was the first time I ever noticed this windmill from the Tobin... ...it wasn't spinning, either.
Small Spuds
Take the cost of this project and compare it to the amount of money that our government pays highly profitable oil companies under various programs that amount to corporate welfare.
Save your breath/ire for that.
Hi, you must be new and/or don't know me
Since I abhor fossil fuel subsidies (and have disdain for subsidies in general).
Oh, sorry
I didn't know that you were Don Quixote.
Nice to meet you.
So...
So I believe in a free energy market, thus making wind more viable, and that makes me Don Quixote? Okay, bud.
I go by that wind turbine
every day, it's quite visible from the Haverhill/Reading commuter rail line. It's hardly ever spinning, so the AG's demand to get some of their money back doesn't suprise me.
Different windmill?
I used to take the Reading Branch every day (now the 426) and I think you're referring to the MWRA windmill in "Charlestown" (come on, it should be Everett) which also doesn't spin.
How about the wind turbine
How about the wind turbine next to the SouthEast Expressway, at the IBEW site? That wind turbine always has the blades flat to the wind, but the thing turns regardless of wind speed or direction.
Rumor is that some of these turbines have electric motors to keep the blades rotating when the wind dies and these turbines can use more electricity than they generate. If so, this is worse than the Chelsea and Charlestown turbines.
IBEW Training Turbine, you mean?
That one is there so that IBEW members can learn to take them apart, service them, wire them, etc. It isn't meant to be productive in terms of generating power, but to be productive in terms of training people to keep other wind turbines generating power.
International Brotherhood of ELECTRICAL Workers, ya know!
Frist I've heard of this.
Frist I've heard of this. I've rarely seen it disassembled, serviced, wired, or otherwise worked on. Still odd that the turbine turns so often with the blades flat to the wind. What's to be gained by running the turbine off a motor for so much of the time?
The MWRA windmill
spins all the time, you must be missing it. The Chelsea Creek windmill, on the other hand, is on the same plot of land as a former abandoned factory that has been in the process of rehabilitation for years. I am assuming that windmill is not spinning since the building is still vacant, and there are no residents to use any electricity.
I'm thinking of the wind turbine
by the Mystic River and the MBTA shops. And you're right, it's in Charlestown, not Chelesa. My bad.
And, yes, that turbine is NOT spinning most of the time.
Which direction
there's two.. One if you're going inbound (toward Charlestown), which is the one at the MWRA site in Everett.
The other one you can see outbound (actually its hard to see because once you start the decent into Chelsea, it disappears behind the Soldiers Home). This is the one at Forbes Park.
To be honest, I had to look up where this is in Chelsea. Now it makes sense because that damn turbine is in a locked position 99% of the time.
The locals say this about that turbine.. "It's blow the roaches from Chelsea into Revere"
Interesting...
I used to live in Revere before I moved to Everett, and I saw this thing coming home all the time on Rt 1A. I always wondered why it never moved and thought maybe it was locked or something was wrong with it. The MWRA one on the other hand does move--not all the time, but definitely more than the Chelsea one. I've also noticed the turbine itself seems to rotate--didn't know they could do that.
Did'nt work as designed
I worked on the early stages of this development project. The owners knew it wasn’t going to generate much power; it was a marking tool for selling the development. Project is stalled, it failed to generate on two fronts!
Yes, it was. I know the
Yes, it was. I know the person responsible for getting it built. It never generated power because NStar refused to hook it to their grid.
Here's some background on the development
Globe story about it. It's got some amazing views, but the neighborhood it's in seems kinda sketchy. I love looking at the old building near the water when you drive by on Rt 16.
I'm pretty close with one of
I'm pretty close with one of the architects who worked on this project. It was doomed from the start, mainly because the EPA and NStar didn't care, or didn't want it to happen:
1) The Army Corps of Engineers required the developers to clean up waste along the river that the developers proved was being generated from a nearby industrial sites fronting the river. When they took their documentation from a licensed environmental engineer to the EPA and Army Corps, they just shrugged and issued another fine.
2) The turbine never turned because NStar refused to hook it to the grid. The person involved was directly responsible for the permitting of the turbine. NStar balked at having power sold back to the grid during peak usage hours and wanted a bigger cut of the plant's capacity. Because the turbine was never designed to fully power the site at all times, the site needed NStar to build the junction, which they never did.
The developer was trying to rehab a brownfield site and make it a useful place for people to live, just as they did for a popular loft community near Davis.
Thanks for the NStar details
The developers needed to sign a contract with NStar prior to getting a grant for the wind turbine. If they had a contract and NStar broke it, NStar needs to pay. Too bad the EPA is so unreasonable to a developer trying to clean up a bad site. With all the political grease in Somerville, the new development on the old Ford Motor site likely won't have the EPA in the way.
The feds wasted lots of money on Homeland Security toys along with stimulus failures. They got beat up bad in the press, so are just trying to protect taxpayers from more losses. One idle windmill doesn't make this list:
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/10/18/president-obam...
Forbes Lofts
Kind of a sad story. Good intentions pave the road..etc. As I recall these guys forged ahead with the development without much care for any permits or anything. I never understood how they were allowed to do anything as the regulatory restrictions on Chelsea Creek are pretty rough -- designated port area, Chapter 91, Army Corps of Engineers jurisdiction for stuff in the Creek, and then the zoning of the City itself -- all a nightmare.
They threw up the turbine in short order and I heard something similar about failure to first get assurances from the utilities that they would be able to link into the grid. When it first went up it was spinning regularly, which invoked the wrath of the neighbors ("the NOISE! my GOD the NOISE!!"). Eventually it stopped moving and I remember hearing that they were forced to lock it in place and prevent it from moving.
Bad timing on the whole effort as the market pooped the bed right as they were trying to sell units during construction. Crazy expensive for something not even LEED certified - when the whole point was the eco-friendly nature of the development.
The site itself was a former lithograph shop and the banks of the creek there have multicolored chunks of solid ink in the debris....quite pretty. Here's hoping someone can pick up where they left off and do something useful with the place.
And I wouldn't call the n'hood there sketchy, unless one's opinion of Chelsea as a whole is "sketchy." Of course you could be talking about the exotic diseases carried by the fine working women of El Xielo....sketchy indeed.