This evening, we paid a visit to the Tiverton, Rhode Island Town Council to discuss the possibilities of a wind partnership. On our way to the Tiverton Town Hall, we visited the Portsmouth Abbey Wind Project, a 660kW wind turbine that has been operating at the Portsmouth Abbey for nearly 4 years. Pictured here is Chris beneath the spinning blades of the Abbey turbine.

The meeting was very informative, with a representative from the Abbey describing the wind development process, and two representatives from Portsmouth Town, who described the process of developing a town-owned turbine with State funds. You can visit a website that describes the Portsmouth process at http://portsmouthrienergy.com/

The Portsmouth project is different from what Emergent normally promotes. The project will be wholly owned by the Town, and the Town will incur all debt and all risk for the development of the wind turbine. We then presented to the Tiverton Town Council an alternative option to the town fully developing their own wind turbine and fronting full feasibility and development costs. Our alternative includes simple profit sharing in the form of a land-lease agreement, in which Tiverton would lease Emergent land for the wind turbine, and Emergent would share a percentage of the generated profit with Tiverton. Tiverton would also enter into a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Emergent, where Tiverton would buy electricity at a reduced price from current retail prices from the Emergent wind turbine. In this way, both Tiverton and Emergent benefit from the construction of the turbine.

Pictured below is the Tiverton Town Hall meeting room and the Town Council. All in all, we believe we made a strong presentation to the Tiverton Town Council, and we hope they are now more interested in pursuing a future in wind power!