A monk and an architect are leading the charge.

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, July 10, 2005

BY ALEX KUFFNER and STEVE PEOPLES
Journal Staff Writers

PORTSMOUTH -- He is a monk, a handyman, a drama teacher and Portsmouth Abbey's resident cow expert.

And on this spring day, Brother Joseph Byron is also playing the role of a renewable energy guru.

He walks up a narrow path behind the Catholic boarding school's hockey rink, his black robes billowing in the stiff wind off Narragansett Bay. He passes a pasture on his left, where Thunder and Patsy, two 1,000-pound Scottish highlanders, are busy munching grass.

Brother Joseph stops at a neon-orange circle painted in the grass. A waist-high sign is planted at its center, reading, "WIND TURBINE HERE."

The monk's blue eyes twinkle as he talks about the project like an excited teenager. He describes the plan as "cool." He hopes people won't "freak."

"Not surprisingly, everyone thought a wind turbine was better than a nuclear reactor or something," he says.

A year ago, Brother Joseph knew nothing about wind power. But then he got a call from a Roger Williams University architecture professor about a windmill. After some discussion, the 15 other Benedictine monks gave their blessing. And everything changed.

Blessed by the town and neighbors, Portsmouth Abbey is finalizing an order for a Danish-made Vestas V47 wind turbine.

It wasn't cheap.

Even with a $450,000 grant from the state Renewable Energy Fund, Portsmouth Abbey is still putting up about $800,000. In return, the school expects the turbine will generate enough electricity to save about $100,000 a year.

Scheduled to go on line in December, the 241-foot-high machine will be the first of its kind in Rhode Island and one of only a few of its size in New England.

A smattering of state officials, joined by a handful of advocates across the state, are hoping that the project in this small East Bay community will invigorate support for wind power in Rhode Island.

"They need somebody like us to take the chance and put something up," Brother Joseph says. "Everybody's waiting to see what happens here."

WHILE PORTSMOUTH Abbey is leading the charge to invest in wind energy in Rhode Island, it isn't alone.

The Town of Bristol and Roger Williams University are working on a joint study. The University of Rhode Island is drawing up a plan. Officials at Johnson & Wales University and Raytheon are showing interest.

It's an unlikely cast of characters. The monks in Portsmouth. An environmental student group at URI. The parks and recreation director in Bristol.

Driving them on is a Roger Williams University architecture professor: Lefteris Pavlides, who talks animatedly about the aesthetic and even spiritual aspects of wind power.

In a recent news story in the Japan Times, Pavlides was described as a "wind-power evangelist." It's a label that embarrasses him. He says he doesn't want it repeated, but then he repeats it himself, chuckling at how it sounds.

He keeps a photograph on his computer of him and his wife standing in front of a windmill on the Greek island of Mykonos. He describes turbines as objects of beauty.

"It makes the invisible visible," Pavlides says.

He and other supporters of wind energy argue that wind is an endless resource. Harnessing it doesn't pollute the environment. And turbines can help reduce this country's reliance on foreign oil and gas.

PAVLIDES doesn't have a degree in engineering or science. He came to the United States in 1966 from Athens to attend Brandeis University, where he was a math major. He went on to get a master's degree in architecture from Yale University and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Over the past three years, he has taught himself about wind power.

Now the 57-year-old architect heads a team of professors and students at Roger Williams working on a project that has become a clearinghouse for information about wind power in Rhode Island.

Unlike several western states, wind projects are rare on the East Coast. There are no large turbines operating in Rhode Island, although there are smaller machines operating on Block Island and in Bristol and Tiverton.

That could be changing.

The cost of wind energy has come down from 40 cents per kilowatt-hour in the 1970s to less than 5 cents per kilowatt-hour today. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates costs could soon be as low as 3 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Meanwhile, the cost of fossil fuels is increasing. Already, wind power can be a cheaper alternative. Electricity produced from fossil fuel can cost around 8 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Christine Real de Azua, spokeswoman for the American Wind Energy Association, in Washington, D.C., says wind machines only produce less than 1 percent of the U.S. total of electricity. But, she says, wind energy capacity has more than doubled since 2000 and is continuing to grow steadily.

Turbine technology is also improving.

The gears and brakes in newer turbines keep the rotors turning at a constant rate, which among other things, minimizes the sound they produce and reduces the threat to birds in flight. Older models, which spin more rapidly and unpredictably, posed a bigger threat to birds.

The new turbines are also close to maintenance-free. They shut themselves down in hurricane-force winds. They send operational updates by e-mail.

And because the blades are made from more flexible materials, the new turbines can operate for 20 or even 30 years.

"From the technological point of view, there are no questions," said Real de Azua. "The question is more about policy. That isn't so certain."

But in recent years, Rhode Island and other states have created incentives to promote and subsidize renewable energy. In Rhode Island, the General Assembly last year voted to increase the state's use of renewable energy from the current 2 percent to 16 percent in 2020.

Massachusetts and 16 other states have enacted similar bills.

THE TOWN OF HULL sits on a peninsula that juts into the southern end of Massachusetts Bay.

At its very tip -- a place called Windmill Point -- is a sleek, steel wind turbine.

It rises over Hull High School's football field, facing the ocean. A light blinks on top of the turbine, and its fiberglass composite blades make a gentle whoosh as they slowly spin.

At 23 stories tall, it's one of the largest turbines on the East Coast, producing 1.5 million kilowatt-hours a year, enough energy on average to power 250 homes in Hull.

The town paid about $700,000 for the machine. It was installed in December of 2001.

It costs Hull 3.4 cents a kilowatt-hour to produce electricity with the turbine, much less than the 8 cents per kilowatt-hour it costs to buy power from outside.

And the town also receives production energy tax credits that it can resell and other incentives from the federal government.

The net gain from the turbine adds up to an estimated $140,000 a year. Over 20 years, the town expects to make about $3 million -- or up to $4 million if the turbine lasts longer.

Hull has already paid off the cost of the turbine and has ordered a second, much larger turbine, for the municipal landfill.

Other towns have taken notice. Including one in Rhode Island.

EVERY WINTER, when Walter Burke puts together his budget for the next year he knows that one line item will inevitably increase. Burke, director of the Bristol Parks and Recreation Department since 1995, is sick of the cost of electricity rising year after year.

Last year, he complained to the town administrator. The men hit upon the idea of building a windmill.

"It came out of the clear blue sky," Burke said.

That spring, he called the State Energy Office and learned about the Rhode Island Renewable Energy Fund, which had money available for projects such as his.

He met Pavlides. Then, he heard about Hull.

"It's very similar to Bristol, as far as the taxbase, the population and even the amount of wind blowing in off the water," Burke said. "It's just a perfect working model for us."

The town, along with Pavlides and his team, have identified several possible sites in Bristol, including the Roger Williams campus overlooking Mount Hope Bay and the town's landfill a mile north.

One idea would be for the town to follow Hull's lead. The other would be for the university to build a turbine.

"We're all looking at ways to turn things around, so that our taxes don't go up every year," said Town Council member Kenneth A. Marshall.

Likewise, James C. Noonan, the vice president for finance and chief financial officer at Roger Williams, said: "The cost is nearly there. . . . It's just about feasible."

AT THE UNIVERSITY of Rhode Island, the push is coming from a small group of students.

The Renewable Energy Club contacted Pavlides in late 2003 with questions about turbines. The idea seemed far-fetched at the time, says Auriane Koster, the 19-year-old club president.

"Look, I was in high school a couple years ago," she said. "I was worrying about playing in soccer games then. Now, I'm talking about renewable energy and building a turbine."

But Pavlides took the students seriously. He put them in touch with someone at the state Renewable Energy Fund. Roger Williams students put together photosimulations. Club members

also visited Hull.

They met with URI president Robert L. Carothers and the school's master plan review team, which controls all construction on campus. The club put forward seven possible sites for the turbine and settled on one near Plain and Flagg roads on the northwest side of campus.

The proposed 300-foot turbine, larger than the machine in Hull, would be located in a turf field far from any buildings. It would provide 5 million kilowatt-hours of electricity to the university or 5 percent of its energy needs.

Koster is working with school administrators to figure out how to finance the $2.2-million plan.

One option is to have Noresco Inc., the school's outside energy contractor, pay for the turbine, according to J. Vernon Wyman, the university's assistant vice-president for business services. The school would then repay the contractor using savings generated by the windmill.

The Renewable Energy Club has already attached an anemometer to a campus radio tower to collect data on wind speed, direction and intensity. Noresco is using the instrument to put together a study.

"Sometimes I go outside and think, 'Wouldn't it be a great day for a wind turbine?' " Koster said. "When that first turbine goes up, I want to go and give it a hug."

THERE ARE QUESTIONS about wind power that have slowed its development.

Reliability is one. Nobody can guarantee when the wind will blow or at what speeds.

At the moment, the only wind farm in New England is an 11-turbine facility located in a sparsely populated area in the Green Mountains of Vermont.

And winds in New England are relatively weak in most areas. Most of Rhode Island has only average winds, according to maps compiled by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Not even coastal locations, such as Portsmouth Abbey's campus, get exceptional winds. They are classified as "fair," averaging between 14 and 16 mph.

But winds need to blow only at about 12 mph on average to generate enough energy to make a turbine viable, said Jon G. McGowan, a professor of engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a researcher at the Renewable Energy Research Laboratory there.

McGowan said New England has been slow to develop its wind resources because it's hard to find sites for turbines away from densely populated areas.

Yet, he says, it makes sense to build in populated areas with access to distribution lines.

Most recently, people have objected to the appearance of the massive machines -- most notably the $700-million proposal put forward by Cape Wind Associates to build rows of turbines in Nantucket Sound.

"Some people simply don't want to look at these things," said McGowan.

So far, there hasn't been any organized opposition to the proposals in Rhode Island.

"I think in Rhode Island it will catch on," said Pavlides. "When there's enough information out there, it will only be a matter of time."

But how much time? McGowan says he's been thinking that New England was on the verge of a green power revolution for 30 years.

"It's slow going," he says.

IN HULL, there have been too many tours to count.

Since Hull erected its windmill, the flow of outsiders to the seaside town has been constant: professors, environmentalists, students, politicians. They come in cars and buses, from all over the Northeast and beyond.

"It's been a blessing, but I hope to get other towns on board so I can go back to my day job," said Andrew Stern, a member of the Citizens For Alternative Renewable Energy, a Hull group that pushed for the turbine.

Back in Rhode Island, Brother Joseph expects a similar reception.

When up and running, the Abbey's turbine will be more than a power producer, he says. It will be a symbol of changing energy priorities for Rhode Island.

Brother Joseph wonders how Thunder and Patsy will react to the turbine and the crowds he thinks it will attract.

He looks at the shaggy cows affectionately and then points to a flat, dirt-covered area to his left.

"That's where they'll put the new parking area," he says with a smile.