NEWS

Murrieta woman pushes to get city to allow wind turbine

The Press-Enterprise
April 9, 2008
www.pe.com
By Rocky Salmon

Every afternoon, Diana Hofman can stand outside her Murrieta home and feel energy going to waste.

Tonight, she will ask the Murrieta Planning Commission to allow her to build a wind turbine so she can harness the breeze that flows around her house and turn it into electricity.

The city initially knocked the wind out of her request because the city did not have any alternative-energy laws allowing the construction of a turbine.
 
Diana Hofman wants the Murrieta Planning Commission to allow her to build a wind turbine on her Murrieta property so she can harness the breeze that flows around her house and turn it into electricity. The city, however, does not have a law allowing turbine construction.
"All these cities have been told to push green and are talking about going green, so imagine my surprise that they didn't even have laws about alternative energy," Hofman said from the backyard of her home nestled up against the Santa Rosa Ecological Plateau.

"I'm hoping this kind of gets these cities to change their laws and gets more people to come forward and to use alternative energy," Hofman said.

Hofman's request set off debate within Murrieta's City Hall on green technology, ending with a green workshop. At that workshop, council members directed city staff to look at all the city's ordinances and make sure the city was open to environmentally friendly ideas.

Councilman Doug McAllister said the city should try to encourage these options and not slow them down.

"I don't want us to get where there are so many layers of approval that it keeps us from giving out these types of permits," he said.

Similar wind-turbine requests have been processed throughout the Inland area, from Lake Arrowhead to Riverside.

According to a guidebook for wind turbines put out by the American Wind Energy Association's Small Wind Advocate Team, San Bernardino County had 38 properties with small wind turbines and Riverside County had seven wind turbines prior to 2004.

The guidebook includes an excerpt about a Moreno Valley man who installed a wind turbine on his property. According to his story, it took six months to get through the planning process.

According to the handbook, both San Bernardino and Riverside counties have refined rules to allow wind turbines to get built quicker. The association even has maps showing where wind is strong enough to support a wind turbine.

Murrieta officials never took up the issue until Hofman started bringing in packets of information on wind turbines and requested a permit.

Hofman said she got the idea from a magazine and started researching small wind turbines. She was looking for ways to make her property more cost-efficient and environmentally friendly.

"It is so costly to put up solar panels," she said. "Instead my answer is right outside my door."

Hofman's home, where she runs the Wind Canyon Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, is nestled on 2.5 acres at the base of the Santa Rosa Plateau.

Looking to the west, visitors can see hillsides with two separate canyons that converge near the property. Those canyons act as funnels pushing the ocean breeze and driving it through her property. Maps show Murrieta as a bad area for wind turbines, but the land around the base of the hills is a prime location for catching the breeze, she said.

The winds slowly build over the day until they reach about 15 mph in the late afternoon. Winds continue through the night. It is so windy, Hofman has to use her home as a windbreak to grow a garden. She does not have a wind chime hanging outside.

"We tried to put one up and it drove me crazy," she laughed.

Hofman wants to build a SkyStream wind turbine about 30 feet tall with a span of 9 feet. The turbine produces electricity when the wind tops 8 mph. The spinning blades -- made of plastic, wood, and resin -- turn the kinetic energy into electricity, which is then routed directly into the home's electrical system, according to the company's Web site.

The turbine can generate a minimum of 400 kilowatt hours of electricity a month, enough to run Hofman's entire home, she said. Hofman spends about $200 a month on electricity.

After a $4,500 rebate, Hofman will spend about $8,000 on the turbine. She said a number of neighbors and residents have called her to ask about installing their own turbines.

"I'm not saying tract homes should have wind turbines," she said. "But if you got the wind, might as well use it. And I definitely have the wind."