What we had before sort of started out as a symbol for progress ... but quickly became an embarrassment.”

Town Administrator Richard Rainer

PORTSMOUTH — It isn’t a fast — nor comfortable — ride to the top of the new wind turbine at Portsmouth High School.

Only two people can fit into the cramped cage of a lift and they need to face away from each other — or they’re practically kissing. 

While your typical building elevator climbs anywhere from 200 to 500 feet per minute, this one crawls along at 32. It gets hotter and more humid the higher you go, and the safety harness you’re wearing — clamps must be used whenever you’re outside the lift — isn’t helping matters. 

The lift won’t take you all the way; you must climb a ladder another 10 yards or so before you can pop the top of the nacelle.

Your reward, however, is a spectacular panoramic view of Portsmouth from 279 feet up. You’re on top of it all — Fort Butts, the PHS football field, the Sakonnet River Bridge and Carnegie Abbey Tower.

Following a ribbon-cutting ceremony with town officials and state lawmakers at the base of the turbine Friday morning, Mark DePasquale, owner of the company that owns and operates the new machine, said some town officials have already been inquiring about getting a ride up.

“We’re actually going to go through some training with them, and a couple of them are excited to go,” said Mr. DePasquale of Wind Energy Development out of North Kingstown, which has essentially — and thankfully, Portsmouth officials say — put the town out of the renewable energy business.

The ceremony brought an end to a four-year-plus ordeal for the town, which got the original turbine built after voters approved a $3 million bond issue in 2007. Constructed in 2009, its blades stopped spinning in 2012 due to a faulty gearbox supplied by a company that has since gone bankrupt.

In November 2014 the Town Council voted to contract with WED to build a new turbine so the town could pay off the remaining debt that was left on the property. Under the agreement, WED paid a lump sum of $1.45 million to the town and in exchange, the town is buying energy generated from the 1.5-megawatt machine over a 25-year period at a rate of 15.5 cents per kilowatt hour.

Under a sublease, the Town of Coventry will purchase any excess energy produced by the turbine. “It’s virtual net metering,” explained Mr. DePasquale. “We’re putting the energy into the grid and the credits are being aggregated. They power the town up and the excess goes to Coventry. It’s a collaboration between two towns.”

He added, “I’m very happy to see this through; it’s important to us.”

‘We persevered’

Town Administrator Richard Rainer said he was pleased that WED and town officials — in particular Town Planner Gary Crosby — were able to put together a plan to recoup taxpayers’ debt and keep renewable energy on the forefront in Portsmouth.

“It paid off the debt and we don’t have to maintain it, so we’re out of the energy production business but yet we still get to be a pioneer,” said Mr. Rainer. “What we had before sort of started out as a symbol for progress and inspired other communities, but quickly became an embarrassment. But we persevered, we weathered the storm and we came up with a solution that works out best for the town and best for the residents. And, we have a clean energy source for the next 25 years.”

Town Council President Keith Hamilton noted the new turbine had been producing energy for about 10 days as of Friday. Finally, he said, the answer to the question he’s been hearing for more than four years — “What’s going on with the turbine?” — is self-apparent.

“You come over the bridge and you see it, and you come up East Main Road and you see it,” he said.

Mr. Rainer also thanked WED for contributing $67,000 to the Leonard Brown House renovation project at Glen Farm. WED had received the money from the town as an incentive payment for completing a portion of the turbine project early, but donated the funds back. The town wants to revitalize the historic farmhouse on Linden Lane and have it serve as headquarters for the town’s Recreation Department.

WED project developer Hannah Morini, in turn, thanked town leaders “for never losing sight of the town’s best interests.”

As for Mr. Crosby, he seemed pleased as punch while gazing at the gleaming new turbine before him Friday.

“I’m delighted that we arrived at such an elegant solution after four and a half years since the last one stopped. It’s a great thing,” he said.

Shadow flicker?

Mr. Crosby said he has not yet heard of any complaints from nearby residents regarding shadow flicker from the new turbine. If there are, however, there’s more flexibility with this machine to pacify abutters, he said.

“I don’t think it’s going to be near the problem it was with the last turbine, simply because if someone has a real, demonstrative problem, we’ll be able to just shut the machine off. It generates a great deal more power than the last machine, so there’s some wiggle room,” Mr. Crosby said.

The planner said he researched shadow flicker’s impact on one particular home near the turbine. He found that “in the most optimal situation” — clear skies and the blades at an angle that would typically cause the most flicker — the home was impacted by flicker during two, six-week periods each year, and for about 90 minutes per day.

“So, there is an opportunity to just shut it off during that period and it won’t have much of an impact on electric production. Obviously, if everybody has a problem with it and we have to shut it off too much, that’s not going to be good,” he said.

Mr. DePasquale said he’s been talking to some residents and monitoring the flicker. “What’s nice about this machine is that we can actually curtail it, if there are problems,” he said.

The new turbine is demonstratively quieter than the previous one. “We knew that from day one, because there are no moving parts in this turbine. The generator is very quiet and there’s no gear box or motors in it that create noise. The loudest noise you hear in the turbine is the fan,” Mr. DePasquale said.

Mr. Crosby agreed. “You can’t hear it,” he said. “One of the blades on the old turbine had a whistle to it; you could here it at certain wind speeds. There was a little ding in it or something, and it whistled.”