In early 2002 Dave attended a conference in Boston held by the American Wind Energy Association at which the head of the Department of Energy, Spencer Abraham, was present. As they talked, Mr. Abraham suggested that Dave approach the University of Massachusetts Renewable Energy Research Laboratory as a possible resource. UMass had equipment and students available that would allow the Cooperative to begin to quantify the wind resource available. 

The Cooperative secured a grant for the study. The site for the anemometer was 55 m (180.5 ft.) above sea level. The tower supporting the measuring equipment was 40 meters (141.2 ft.). Readings were collected for nearly three years; from August 28, 2002 – August 25, 2005. The final report summarized the mean wind speed at 5.3 m/s (11.9 mph) from a predominately south-southwesterly direction. All of the data from this study, and the entire report can be found in the "Wind Data" section of this website.

As the Cooperative was gathering this very useful data on the islands’ wind potential, its undersea cable was becoming increasingly unreliable. During 2004 alone it faulted 14 times. The outages lasted between five hours and two days. It was obvious that the cable was reaching the end of its useful life. Dave began meeting with wind developers with an eye towards making the replacement of the undersea cable a prerequisite to any development. Perhaps this would be a way to remedy the reliability issues without incurring additional debt. However, that was not to be the case. Most developers wanted to place 40-50 turbines in order to strike a deal!

Back at the drawing board, the Cooperative secured funding for its cable project through a grant and a loan from the Rural Utilities Service. The cable was installed in May of 2005 providing reliable infrastructure by which power reaches the islands. It just so happens that the cable is just as reliable in transporting power back to the mainland. This turns out to be a vital capability if we are to efficiently develop our wind resource, since even with a large wind turbine there will be times when we need to purchase power, and times when we will be generating more power than we can use on the island. (See the “Economnics” section of this website)

Beginning in the summer of 2007, the Coop began once again to seriously explore the possibility of a wind project on the Fox Islands. Under the auspices of the Island Institute, a group consisting of people from several island electric power companies, along with experts and interested parties from the mainland, began to discuss the economic and technical feasibility of wind generation on Maine’s islands. Given the Coop’s interest in wind power, we were eager to move quickly to assess the feasibility of our project.

The Coop has conducted extensive economic analysis of a wind power project on the Fox Islands. We are currently envisioning two turbines with a total generating capacity of between 3.6 and 5 megawatts. Such a project would generate about the same amount of power in a year as the Coop uses. An overview of this economic analysis is in the “Economics” section of this website.

The Coop has also hired the engineering firm of Woodard & Curran to conduct a site design and cost estimate study. Their preliminary assessment is that such a project is technically feasible, though the cost of transporting and erecting the turbines will be significantly higher than it would be for mainland construction.

The Coop has also begun a study of the impact of the project on local flora and fauna, including birds, bats and plants. A discussion of this study can be found in the “Environmental Impact” section of this website.

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