Your Approval Checklist:
1. Get engineering plans for your WindTamer turbine.
2. Contact your local zoning office.
3. Contact your utility.
4. Contact your neighbors.
Getting a wind turbine approved by your local jurisdiction is often a daunting—and sometimes expensive—chore. If you’ve looked into the issue at all, you may have come across the excellent four-part series on the subject by small-wind turbine expert Mick Sagrillo on the American Wind Energy Association Website The first part of the series is titled, “Trials & Tribulations,” which should give you an idea of the potential hassles.
WindTamer Turbines have so far avoided these often long and tedious negotiations. The reasons are simple and they played out recently at a town board meeting in Upstate New York. Approval for WindTamer Turbines has followed this example in case after case because the turbines’ design overcomes the reservations of local government officials and easily avoids the restrictions of local ordinances.
The Bloomfield Town Board, which represents a municipality in the Finger Lakes regions, met at the end of January 2009 in a blustery snow storm to consider two items: some plans for the new fire hall (approved) and the application of Robert and Linda Dobberstein to have a WindTamer Turbine installed in the backyard of their 200-year-old bed and breakfast, the Amber Adams House.
As the board members went through the ordinances applying to wind turbines, it quickly became clear, as Robert Dobberstein said, “This is not the type of unit the rules were written for.” The rules in most municipalities are standard codes written for standard, open-rotor, wind turbines. These codes are generally designed to insure the safety of local residents and the local bird population, and to make sure the wind turbines are not a nuisance for aesthetic or noise reasons.
The height of a turbine is perhaps the most crucial factor. Building any structure above a set limit—say, 40 feet—often requires a variance. And codes often call for a turbine to be placed within the property so that the distance from the base of the turbine’s tower or pole to the property line is equal to the height of the turbine, or even twice the height of the turbine (the distance is often referred to as “the fall zone”). This is to ensure that if the pole or tower breaks, the unit will fall within the property lines. Since the Dobberstein’s WindTamer Turbine will reach 35 feet at its highest point, the board just wanted to know it would be placed properly. Traditional turbines usually must be placed on towers at least 60, and often 80 or more feet high, so they can catch enough wind to generate a reasonable amount of electricity. Winds blow stronger and steadier at higher altitudes. But this height requirement causes standard turbines to usually require variances and often long negotiations with municipal boards and zoning boards.
However, because their design makes them so much more efficient, WindTamer Turbines can catch enough wind at lower altitudes, and so sit on much lower poles.
The Bloomfield Town Board members were thorough in their evaluation of the WindTamer Turbine. How much noise would it produce? Would it harm birds? Would the blades ice up (a particularly good question with the blizzard outside) and then throw the ice? Does it need a six-foot fence surrounding it, as the code calls for?
One by one these concerns were allayed by the Dobbersteins and by WindTamer inventor and CEO Gerald Brock, who attended the meeting. Because the turbine’s blades are housed within the “diffuser,” birds would see it as a solid structure and not fly into it and the blades would not ice up. And because of the diffuser and the relatively short blades spin at relatively low speeds, the WindTamer Turbine operates silently even at the highest wind speeds. A fence wasn’t needed because the pole is so smooth it can’t be climbed.
The board unanimously approved a special use permit for the Dobberstein’s unit. This meant that the couple didn’t even have to run their proposal past the local zoning board, which was to meet in two weeks. The typical process, which expert Sagrillo describes as “a direction for weaving through the zoning maze in the quest for a building permit for a residential-sized wind system” had been skipped.
Approval for a WindTamer Turbine doesn’t always happen so quickly. Garry Wilson became interested in purchasing a unit for his horse farm in the town of Le Roy, N.Y. in the summer of 2009. At that time, though, the town had a moratorium on wind turbines, though in early December of that year they removed the moratorium and adopted the rules and regulations of a nearby town, which already had several small wind turbines.
Once the regs were in place, Wilson checked with his local zoning official to find out the process to gain approval. Following the official’s advice, he first sought a recommendation for approval from the proper officials at the country level, in his case Genesee County. That was quickly granted, then he sought a recommendation from the local planning board, which was also quickly granted. With those two recommendations in hand he won approval from the town board. Because his turbine met all the regulations of the new codes, he was granted a special use permit, and did not have to seek a variance from the local zoning board. “You just need a little patience,” says Wilson. “The whole process took just six weeks, and while there was paperwork involved, I don’t consider it a lot of red tape.”
The first WindTamer for residential use was placed in the town of Perry, Wyoming County, in Upstate New York. The code enforcement officer for Wyoming County, Donald Roberts, has an interesting perspective on zoning for wind turbines. Wyoming County is now home to more than 260 of the gigantic turbines which reach more than 200 feet in height. When the first of these were proposed for the county in 2006, a one-year moratorium on them was declared so the county and the various municipalities within it could rewrite zoning laws to deal with them. By contrast, when approval was sought for the Perry WindTamer Turbine, it was granted immediately. Because of its height and design, Roberts said it wasn’t even considered a wind turbine, but simply an “accessory structure.” Other towns have looked at it the same way. “We just regulated it by fall zone,” said Roberts, who is also the zoning officer for Perry.
Your Approval Checklist
WindTamer representatives will help you through the planning and zoning process. But here is a checklist of steps to make approval go smoothly:
1. Have the engineering plans for your WindTamer turbine ready. You can download the plans here. These are typically required by the proper authorities as part of the application for approval.
2. Contact your local zoning office. Your local zoning official can tell you the process in your area for gaining approval. Sometimes you’ll need to seek approval or recommendations from other entities in a county or town before applying with the authority that grants final approval.
3. Contact your utility. Most states now have “net metering” agreements which require them to hook up your wind turbine to the grid and buy the excess electricity your turbine produces. For a list of these states, check this website. This allows you to use your local utility grid as, essentially, your battery bank. You send electricity to the grid and withdraw it as needed. You can also use all the power from your turbine directlyion, or store some of it in batteries on your site. In any case, contact your utility to get their requirements for your particular set up and to schedule inspections as the utility requires.
4. Contact your neighbors. Often the local municipality will allow for public comment on your project at a meeting. It’s much better to educate your neighbors about your plans before notice of such a meeting is made. Let your neighbors know the low height of your unit, it’s lack of noise and other advantages of WindTamer turbines.
