Third turbine, bigger and more powerful, planned for new parcel of land

By Wiley Wood

The two giant turbines along Route 44 East have become familiar landmarks to drivers entering and leaving Norfolk since their erection in 2015. They are about to be joined by a third turbine that will overtop them by 10 stories, or 150 feet, if BNE Energy Inc. has its way.

On Jan. 9, the renewable energy development firm filed a plan with the Connecticut Siting Council to place a 4.23 megawatt (MW) wind turbine on a hilltop behind the original site, still inside the Colebrook town boundaries but pushed to within a few hundred feet of the Norfolk and Winchester town lines.

BNE Energy has petitioned the siting council to approve its plan as a modification of the installation initially permitted in 2011, when it consisted of three turbines rated at 1.5 MW, and upgraded in 2013 to three 2.85 MW turbines. A power purchase agreement with Eversource, the energy distribution company, capped the turbines’ output at 5 MW, and only two of the permitted three turbines were ever built.

Performance reports show that the installation has generated about 12,000 MWh annually, as BNE Energy said it would, the bulk of it in the windy months from October to April. This is the energy required to power approximately 1,200 homes for a year.

The present BNE Energy plan, relying on a new power purchase agreement with Eversource, adds two new parcels of land totaling 40 acres to the original 80-acre site and reroutes the access road south and west across a stream, siting the third turbine on a knoll adjoining Norfolk’s Flagg Hill. The turbine will have a hub height of 420 feet, a wingspan of 453 feet, and a total height of 647 feet, the equivalent of a 45-story building.

While the new emplacement puts the turbine farther from Route 44 and the homes along Colebrook’s Flagg Hill Road, the structure will loom over the cluster of houses in Norfolk’s Grantville district. Two houses on Beckley Road are particularly close.

A family who bought their house on Flagg Hill in 2018 explain that they are very much in favor of wind energy. “We’ve actually liked hearing the gentle shushing of the two turbines, knowing that it was generating renewable energy,” said the wife. But the existing turbines are beyond the brow of the hill, while the new turbine would be directly over them and only a thousand feet away. “We are incredibly concerned,” she said. 

“This should not be happening so close to any residence,” said another Grantville homeowner, who anticipates noise, light pollution and decrease in property values from the new turbine. As he watches what he describes as a “burgeoning industrial zone” creep closer, he is uncertain whether to stay or cut his losses and sell.

When the earlier plans were approved in 2011 and 2013, Connecticut still had no regulations governing the placement of wind turbines. These were passed by the state legislature in 2014 and address a range of environmental, aesthetic and quality-of-life issues. Notably, they specify a setback distance from adjoining property lines of 1.5 times the structure height. This would be 965 feet in the case of the proposed turbine, but BNE Energy’s plans show a distance of less than 300 feet to the Nature Conservancy property and only slightly more to the nearest residential property on Beckley Road, where the house is 1,026 feet away.

A common setback distance in many European countries, which have a longer record of dealing with turbine-related health and safety issues, is 1,000 meters from a residence, or a little over 3,000 feet.

The Connecticut Siting Council has not yet (1/27/2020) set a hearing date to consider BNE Energy’s latest request. Formed in 1972 to evaluate the placement of power plants and transmission lines, the council’s responsibilities have widened in recent decades to include hazardous waste facilities and telecommunications infrastructure. Its charge is to balance the public’s need for cost-effective public utilities with the protection of the state’s environment, culture and people. Its authority supersedes all local authority.

In recent years, the council has been a partner in the state’s attempt to expand Connecticut’s green energy portfolio, largely in the form of solar and fuel cell generating facilities. Norfolk’s current effort to develop a 4 MW solar field on its town farm is typical of small-scale facilities cropping up around the state. And while Colebrook’s two turbines are still the only operating wind site in Connecticut to date, several large-scale offshore wind projects have recently been approved: a 304 MW installation off New London in 2018; and an 804 MW installation off Bridgeport this past December, expected to be operational in 2025.

Roberta Willis, who was Norfolk’s state representative during the contentious review process for the initial two turbines, was a strong proponent of renewable energy and felt torn when turbines were sited in her district. She came down in opposition to them, siding with her constituents for health and safety reasons. “It’s a hard issue,” she said recently. “But my memory, looking at wind profile maps for the state, is that Norfolk and Colebrook are where the wind is.” Given the federal and state incentives to develop onshore wind energy, she cautions that more turbines are likely to be proposed for the two towns.