Banner Peak is the site of Nome’s wind farm, complete with about 20 wind vanes. Recently, not all of the vanes have been functional, as one of the smaller units was out of commission for a few months due to a hole in the middle of vane, but repairs have been made, and the wind vane is operational again.
NJUS utility manager John Handeland says this productive, 6-year-old wind farm generates a significant amount of energy to offset diesel fuel power for the City.
“Wind will continue to be a valuable portion of the power production in the community, and we save about 150 thousand gallons of diesel fuel each year by utilizing the wind.”
On the day of our conversation, the wind farm is generating only about 3% of the City’s power. Handeland explains another way to represent that percentage: in kilowatts of energy. He said, “we’re only getting a hundred or two kilowatts out of the 3,600 that Nome is using presently.”
On a windy day, however, the wind farm can generate up to 30% of the city’s power, Handeland says. The Utilities Manager admits he was skeptical about the wind project at first, but he’s changed his mind, especially after NJUS took over operational control of the entire farm from Bering Straits Native Corporation and Sitnasuak Native Corporation a couple of years ago and installed two Dutch brand EWT 900 turbines.
Currently, those two EWT turbines are the largest wind vanes sitting on top of the hill surrounded by numerous 50kW units, or smaller vanes. Though the smaller 50 kilowatt units are still of value to NJUS, Handeland says these vanes are slowly being phased out of use.
“As time goes on, we weigh the maintenance costs versus the contributions they are able to give to us, and systematically, those units will be shut down,” he said.
The next challenge for the Utility is finding a way to store excess wind energy generated by the farm that Handeland says is being thrown overboard. And in terms of finding alternative sources of energy to decrease Nome’s reliance on diesel, well, that’s just a matter of seeing where the wind blows.
