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Navy to harness wind to
cut Cuba base costs
Carol Rosenberg, Knight
Ridder Newspapers. Arizona
Central, Nov. 26, 2004.
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - New York
has the Statue of Liberty. Paris has the
Eiffel Tower. And early next year, four
colossal windmills should tower over this
remote U.S. outpost - new landmarks that
could someday supplant the Pentagon's prison
for terror suspects as the symbol of this
Navy base.
The glossy white windmills will be visible
to distant ships in the Caribbean's Windward
Passage, detainees at this base's terror
prison and even Cubans separated by miles
of minefields from this 45-square-mile U.S.
enclave.
Environmentally friendly, the $11.6 million
project is designed to decrease the consumption
of diesel fuel here by 25 percent. Under
the plan, each windmill should generate
950 kilowatts of energy, save 650,000 gallons
of diesel fuel annually and cut air pollutants
and greenhouse gas emissions by 13 million
pounds a year. advertisement
Best of all, the project requires no special
taxpayers' outlay because of a decade-plus
payback agreement with NORESCO, the Westborough,
Mass., contractor building it.
Under the deal, the Navy will pay the firm
with the annual savings from the Pentagon
budget for diesel oil here, about six cents
a minute, meaning it should be free and
clear by 2020.
"It's an ancient philosophy combined
with state-of-the-art technology,"
said Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey M. Johnston, a Seabee
responsible for all public works here -
from the electricity inside interrogation
cells to the toilets at the elementary school
for sailors' children.
The project is so big that the Navy brought
in a crane and about 500 tons of steel and
fiberglass parts on barges from the United
States to assemble it.
In coming weeks, workers will assemble
the parts atop John Paul Jones Hill, the
highest point on the base, where the 270-foot-tall
wind-driven generators will replace a U.S.
flag and "dominate the skyline,"
said the base commander, Navy Capt. Leslie
J. McCoy.
The flag will fly elsewhere.
As Johnston describes it, the project blends
centuries-old science that has harnessed
the winds through the ages with leading-edge
sensing devices that rotate and swivel the
mills' blades in the winds.
Thanks to the sensors, the turbines can
function in a Category 4 hurricane, said
NORESCO project manager Dan Ingold, but
will typically work hardest from morning
through afternoons, when the trade winds
and air-conditioning consumption are greatest.
They should be fully functioning in April,
a fusion of wind and diesel power producing
25 megawatts to emerge as "the largest
hybrid power system in the world,"
Ingold said. Today's largest hybrid system
is in Australia, making 15 megawatts.
Because of on-again, off-again winds, this
base can never become entirely fossil-fuel
free.
But the goal is to clean up the output
at a plant built at the height of Cold War
tensions.
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© 2004, azcentral.com. All rights reserved.
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